'And I was _sorry_ for you. I do not know why I have a pleasure in showing up my own folly to you; but, as you say, it has always been plain-sailing between us, and one does not easily shake off an old habit. Yes, _sorry_ for you! Not at first. At first I could think of nothing but _him_; but he took a turn for the better very soon--God bless him! As long as he was only getting well, it was enough for me to think that I had him back--oh, quite enough!' some tears stealing, for the first time, into her scorching eyes; 'but when he was on his legs again, and everything going on as usual, then I began to see what I had done.' Her voice has sunk to a low, lagging key of utter dispiritedness. 'You never sent for me; you never wrote to me,' says Talbot hoarsely. 'Did you expect it?' she cries, a sudden eager light breaking all over her face. 'Were you waiting for me to write? Did you watch the post for a letter from me? Oh, if I had only known! Did you--did you?' She has laid her hand convulsively on his coat-sleeve, and is looking up, with all her miserable soul in her eyes, into his face. What can he answer? He had watched the post indeed; but with how different a motive from that with which her passionate hopes have credited him! 'No! I see that you did not,' she says, dropping her hand from his arm with a gesture of disgust, as if she had touched a snake, a horrible revulsion of feeling darkening all her features; 'or, if you did, it was with dread that I should make some effort to get you back. At every post that came in, without bringing you a specimen of my handwriting, you drew a long breath, and said: "It is incredible! I could not have believed it of her; but she has let me go, really!" Come, now,' with a spurious air of gaiety, in ghastly contrast with her drawn features and burning eyes, 'you were always such an advocate for truth; you used to be so severe upon my little harmless falsehoods. Truth! truth! Let us have the truth!' 'Have it, then!' he says desperately, stretching out his arms towards her, as if transferring from his keeping to hers the weight of that murderous confession. 'I _was_ glad!' Again, as once before, she reels, as though it were some heavy physical blow that he had struck her; and again his heart smites him. 'I--I--thought that we had both come to our right minds,' he says, stammering, and seeking vainly for words that will soften the edge of that bitter sword-thrust, and yet not incur the deeper cruelty of bringing again that illusory radiance over her face; 'I--I--thought we might begin our lives again--different, better! We had been most unhappy!'