Lawrence said nothing. He glanced about the room like one who would be glad to escape. He was weary and faint, but he would not seem weary if he could help it; and there was a weight like lead on his heart. He thought, with seeming triviality, that he had never before quite known what that phrase, "a heart as heavy as lead," meant. "You have decided now that you never loved me," she continued. "Why need we discuss that question?" he asked. "Oh, because it suits me to discuss it. I feel analytical this morning. Let us dissect a few feelings. My husband has just had an interview with an old flame, and now he comes and tells me he thinks he never loved me. You must believe that I shall be interested in this subject. Pray, Rodney, if I may ask, what did you feel that made it possible for you to take me to Boston that night?" Lawrence sat gazing at Prudence as she spoke. He had a fanciful notion that his heart was like ashes as well as like lead. How could he have been so blind? He could not now imagine that he had felt what he had felt for Prudence. Some one has said that there is nothing so dead as a dead passion. "I suppose," he said, slowly and drearily, "that I had a fancy for you. You infatuated me; it was a kind of intoxication." "Do you eliminate passion from love?" She put the question as if she were making an inquiry concerning a symptom of disease. "No, but love is not all passion. It has a basis of tenderness and respect; it is not a delirium." "From which you recover to despise yourself?" She seemed to add this to his sentence. Lawrence rose; he stood a moment in front of his wife, gazing down at her. He was bewildered by the tumult of his emotions, by his strange indifference to Prudence, and, perhaps more than all, by his physical weakness. He turned towards the couch near and stretched himself out upon it. His wife rose and put a shawl over him, and he said, "Thank you," in a mechanical way. Then he asked, trying to prevent his voice from showing irritation: "Is it really necessary for us to continue this talk?" "Perhaps not; but if I prefer to go on, dear Rodney?" Lawrence closed his eyes. "Go on," he said. "How kind of you to let me have the last word! But you see I think I'll take up the study of psychology, with you and me as object-lessons. Can't we mount a scrap of our feelings on a bit of glass and put it under that microscope of yours? Really, I didn't think I should come to look back almost with envy to that time when I nursed mamma at Carlsbad. At least I wasn't married then, and Lord Maxwell came to the place. To be sure, he had symptoms, and a man with symptoms isn't much better than a block of wood to flirt with." Prudence's voice was running on with a semblance of gaiety; and now she laughed.