At last Ralph spoke, quietly—so very quietly, that though Marion could not see his face, his voice made her start with a strange, unknown terror. “And who did this thing?” he asked. “Who forced you into this hideous mockery of a marriage?” “No one,” she replied; “no one did it but myself. You can’t understand. Ralph;” and the anguish of appeal and remorse in her voice made it sound like a wailing cry. “You can never know all I have endured. I was so wretched, so very wretched; so utterly, utterly desolate and alone. And then I heard that of you, and I lost my trust, and it nearly killed me. Your own words had warned me not to build too securely on what might be beyond your power to achieve.” Ralph ground his teeth, but she went on: “I thought I was going to die, and I was glad. But I did not die, and he was kind and gentle to me, and I was alone. And I thought—oh! I thought, Ralph, till this very morning, that I had torn you out of my heart. The scar, I knew, would be always there, but the love itself, I thought it was dead and buried; and only just now I sat here thinking to myself in my blindness and folly, that I could even see the grass be ginning to grow on the grave.” “And your husband?” Ralph asked, in the same dead, hard, feelingless tone. “Your husband—I forget the name you told me—do you then care for him? Do you love him?” “Love him!” she exclaimed. “Oh, Ralph, have mercy! I did not mean to deceive him! I told him I could not give him what he gave me; for he, I know, loves me. He is good and true, and very kind to me. And he urged it very much, and said he was not afraid; he would be content with what I said, what I thought I could give him. For remember, Ralph, that other I thought was dead—dead and buried for ever. I care for him too much to have yielded had I known it was not so. But ‘love him!’ When I think of the days when first I learnt what that word means, when you taught it me, Ralph—you, and no other! And now you ask me, calmly, if I love him! You of all!” She stopped suddenly, as if horrified at herself; and then, her excitement changed to bitter shame and self-reproach, she cried in an anguish, “Oh! what am I saying? Why has it all come back when I thought it was gone? You are making me wicked to Geoffrey. Ralph! Ralph! why do you mock me with these cruel questions? Have mercy! Have a little mercy!”