Armitage sat down, and taking off his cap, passed his hand through his thick crop of silvery hair. "I spread that report myself," he said. "I wanted to get out of it all--to give up!--to forget that such a place as London existed. I was sick to death of it!--of its conventions, and vile hypocrisies--its 'bounders' in art as in everything else!--besides, I should have been in the way--Maude was tired of me--" He broke off, with an abstracted look. "You know all about it, you say?" he went on after a pause--"She told you--" "She told me the night she died," answered Blythe quietly--"After a silence of nearly twenty years!" Armitage gave a short, sharp sigh. "Women are strange creatures!" he said. "I don't think they know when they are loved. I loved her--much more than she knew,--she seemed to me the most beautiful thing on earth!--and when she asked me to run away with her--" "She asked you?" "Yes--of course! Do you think I would have taken her against her own wish and will? She suggested and planned the whole thing--and I was mad for her at the time--even now those weeks we passed together seem to me the only real living of my life! I thought she loved me as I loved her--and if she had married me, as I begged her to do, I believe I should have done something as a painter,--something great, I mean. But she got tired of my 'art-jargon,' as she called it--and she couldn't bear the idea of having to rough it a bit before I could hope to make any large amount of money. Then I was disappointed--and I told her so--and SHE was disappointed, and she told ME so--and we quarrelled--but when I heard a child was to be born, I urged her again to marry me--" "And she refused?" interposed Blythe. "She refused. She said she intended to make a rich marriage and live in luxury. And she declared that if I ever loved her at all, the only way to prove it was to get rid of the child. I don't think she would have cared if I had been brute enough to kill it." Blythe gave a gesture of horror. "Don't say that, man! Don't think it!" Armitage sighed. "Well, I can't help it, Blythe! Some women go callous when they've had their fling. Maude was like that. She didn't care for me any more,--she saw nothing in front of her but embarrassment and trouble if her affair with me was found out--and as it was all in my hands I did the best I could think of,--took the child away and placed it with kind country folks--and removed myself from England and out of Maude's way altogether. The year after I came abroad I heard she had married you,--rather an unkind turn of fate, you being my oldest friend! and this was what made me resolve to 'die'--that is, to be reported dead, so that she might have no misgivings about me or my turning up unexpectedly to cause you any annoyance. I determined to lose myself and my name too--no one knows me here as Pierce Armitage,--I'm Pietro Corri for all the English amateur art-lovers in Italy!" He laughed rather bitterly.