"You cannot forgive me, then?" she said. He shuddered. "Forgive you! Is there a man who could forgive twenty years of deliberate deception from the wife he thought the soul of honour? Maude, Maude! We live in lax times truly, when men and women laugh at principle and good faith, and deal with each other less honestly than the beasts of the field,--but for me there is a limit!--a limit you have passed! I think I could pardon your wrong to me more readily than I can pardon your callous desertion of the child you brought into the world--your lack of womanliness--motherliness!--your deliberate refusal to give Pierce Armitage the chance of righting the wrong he had committed in a headstrong, heart-strong rush of thoughtless passion!--he WOULD have righted it, I know, and been a loyal husband to you, and a good father to his child. For whatever his faults were he was neither callous nor brutal. You prevented him from doing this,--you were tired of him--your so-called 'love' for him was a mere selfish caprice of the moment--and you preferred deceit and a rich marriage to the simple duty of a woman! Well!--you may find excuses for yourself,--I cannot find them for you! I could not remain by your side as a husband and run the risk of coming constantly in contact, as we did last night, with that innocent girl, placed as she is, in a situation of so much difficulty, by the sins of her parents--her mother, my wife!--her father, my dead friend! The position is, and would be untenable!" Still she stood, looking at him. "Have you done?" she asked. He met her fixed gaze, coldly. "I have. I have said all I wish to say. So far as I am concerned the incident is closed. I will only bid you good-night--and farewell!" "Good-night--and farewell!" she repeated, with a mocking drawl,--then she suddenly burst into a fit of shrill laughter. "Oh dear, oh dear!" she cried, between little screams of hysterical mirth--"You are so very funny, you know! Like--what's-his-name?--Marius in the ruins of Carthage!--or one of those antique classical bores with their household gods broken around them! You--you ought to have lived in their days!--you are so terribly behind the times!" She laughed recklessly again. "We don't do the Marius and Carthage business now--life's too full and too short! Really, Richard, I'm afraid you're getting very old!--poor dear!--past sixty I know!--and you're quite prehistoric in some of your fancies!--'Good-night!'--er--'and farewell!' Sounds so stagey, doesn't it!" She wiped the spasmodic tears of mirth from her eyes, and still shaking with laughter gathered up her rich ermine wrap on one white, jewelled arm. "Womanliness--motherliness!--good Lord, deliver us!--I never thought you likely to preach at me--if I had I wouldn't have told you anything! I took you for a sensible man of the world--but you are only a stupid old-fashioned thing after all! Good-night!--and farewell!"