Richard Maule, looking at him, knew the answer to his question before he had uttered it, but even so he spoke, obsessed by the cruel wish _to know_. "In Italy----?" His voice sank to a muffled whisper, but he did not take his eyes, his suffering, sunken eyes, from Wantele's tortured face. Still the other did not--could not--speak. "I knew it. At least I felt sure of it." He sighed a quick convulsive sigh, and then in mercy averted his eyes. "But never here?" he muttered questioningly. "Everything was over by the time we came back here?" "Yes, Richard. I swear it." "I knew that too--at least I felt sure of it. I'm afraid you must have suffered a good bit, Dick?" The younger man nodded his head. "I have loathed and I have despised myself ever since." "I'm sorry you did that. I'm sorry I waited till now to tell you that I knew, that I understood." "How you must have hated me!" said Wantele sombrely. "Never, Dick. I--I knew her by then. If you had been the first"--he quickly amended his phrase--"if I had been fool enough to believe you were the first, I think it would have killed me. As it was," his voice hardened, "it only made me curse myself for my blind folly--folly which brought wretchedness and shame on you, Dick, and--and now, I fear, on Jane Oglander"--he saw the confirmation he sought on the other's face. "It's about Jane I wish to speak to you to-night. For a moment I ask of you to think of me as God----" Wantele stared at Richard Maule; it was the first time his cousin had ever uttered the word in his presence. "If I were God--Providence--Fate--and gave you your choice, would you choose that Lingard should marry Jane or that you should marry her?" And as Wantele still stared at him in amazement: "Take it from me--I have never deceived you--that the choice is open to you. I don't wish to hurry you. Take a few moments to think it over." "I--I don't understand," stammered Wantele. "There is no necessity for you to understand. In fact I hope that, after to-night, you will dismiss the whole of this conversation from your mind. But I repeat--the choice is open to you." And he added, musingly, "I think, Dick, that with the others out of the way you could make Jane happy--in time." But there was doubt--painful, deliberating doubt, in his tone. Wantele shook his head. "I don't agree," he said shortly. "You see, Richard, Jane"--he moistened his lips--"Jane's never loved me. She loves Lingard. And so, if God gave me the choice, I would give her to Lingard." "You think well of the man?" Maule spoke lightly, and as if he himself had no reason to dissent from any word commending the soldier.