“I suppose I did go off the tracks a bit. A thing takes hold of you, somehow. Not the eggs—the collecting. Anything would have done as well as eggs. It just happened to be eggs. Of course—now—I admit it was absurd. But the whole business—it made one’s days so full. It was ripping to feel so keen. And when you smashed them—there was a hole in the world. Nothing to fill it. I felt lost—soured—I hated you. But when the war began all that dwindled. The war—but we talked about it the other day. It’s gone. Blown away. And now—I don’t care any more. Not a ha’penny cuss. Queer, isn’t it? So you needn’t worry. I never think of it. But what I do think sometimes—what I’ve never understood——” He stopped in front of her, staring down at her with puzzled eyes—“Laura, what on earth made you do it?” She flushed. “It wasn’t temper. It wasn’t cattishness.” “No. I knew that, you know, all the time—really.” She hesitated painfully—groping for the convincing word. “It was——Because——Oh, Justin, you know what you said yourself, the other day—about the war altering people—altering you, even. Oh, can’t you see? I wanted to do—for you—what the war has done. I wasn’t big enough, I made an insane mess of it. But that’s what I tried to do.” She stopped, her eyes on her hands that trembled in her lap. “But why?” he said, “but why?” She raised her eyes to his patiently, letting him see all he chose, before she dropped them again. The silence that lengthened between them was heavy, but not hostile. It brooded, continued, till she imagined, she dared to believe, that he was remembering, understanding, filling in gaps. He gave a great restless sigh at last, and moved away. “We made a fine old muddle of it all,” he said. Laura had no words. “Didn’t we?” he appealed to her. She gave him a rueful little smile. “I suppose——” His thoughts sent him with long strides up and down and up and down the room—brought him to a standstill at last before Laura in her chair, thought-bound too, yet more at peace than he. “I suppose——” he began again: and then, “Laura, what do you think?” She laughed at him then, openly—a little fearless laugh of pure amusement. Here was a novel gambit! “I _think_,” he would begin, deceptively deprecatory; but he had never before said, “What do _you_ think?” He ignored her laughter, absently, as a nothing, a drift of down, a puff of smoke from the wind-teased fire. He was more deeply engaged. She had set him pondering—wondering—and now, with an amazing, wise simplicity that honoured him and her, he showed her where she had led him, stated his difficulty. “Do you think it’s right to marry as people do abroad—arranged—you know, without falling in love?” She was slow in answering. She had her hope to strangle—her hope, the child of her love. She had to bury it deep, to disown it utterly, as a crazed and shameful bastard. But she did answer at last, faithfully, as she would have had him answer her. “It’s the unforgivable sin,” said Laura.