It would be a way out. If she could bring herself to do it she would make herself safe. For though Seymour Portman had been so faithful, and she had never rewarded him, he was not a man any woman would dare to play with. Lady Sellingworth knew that she would never break a promise to him, would never play fast and loose with him. He was strong and he was true, and he had very high ideals and an almost stern code of honour. In accepting him as her husband she would shut a door of steel between herself and her past, with its sins and its many follies. She would begin again, as an old woman with a devoted husband who would know--none better--how to make himself respected, how to hold by his rights. People might smile at such a marriage, but it would be absolutely suitable. Seymour was a few years older than she was. But he was still strong and upright, could still sit a horse as well as any man, still had a steady hand with his gun. He was not a ruin. She would be able to rest on him. A more perfect support for a woman than Seymour, if he loved, was surely not created. He was a gentleman to the core, and totally incapable of insincerity. He was fearless. He belonged to her world. He was _persona grata_ at Court and in society. And he loved her in that extraordinary and very rare way--as the one woman. All he needed in a woman quite evidently he found in her. How? Why? She did not know, could not understand. But so it was. She would absolutely satisfy his desires. The aspirin was stilling her nerves. She lay without moving. Had she been a humbug when she prayed? Had she prayed knowing quite well that her prayer was not going to be answered, not intending, or wishing, really, that it should be answered? Had she prayed without any belief in a Being who had the power and probably the will to give her what she asked for? Would she have prayed at all had she been sure that if she offered up a petition to be made old in nature as well as in body it would certainly be granted? “I don’t know! I don’t know!” she whispered to herself. The darkness of the big room suddenly seemed very strange. And she thought how odd it was that human beings need in every twenty-four hours a long period of blackness, that they make blackness by turning out light, and stretch themselves out in it as if getting ready for burial. “Burial! If I’m not a humbug, if really I wish for peace, to-morrow I shall send for Seymour,” she said to herself. “Through him I can get peace of mind. He will protect me against myself, without even knowing that he is doing it. I have only to speak a sentence to him and all possibility of danger, torment and wildness will be over for ever.” And then she thought of the safety of a prison. But anything was surely better than misery of mind and body, than wanting terribly from someone what he never wants to give you, what he never wants from you.