He nodded, a smile of genuine reminiscence on his face. “The Pembroke case?” “Yes, dear,” she continued, “the Pembroke case. Do you remember how hard you worked then?” “By Jove, I do!” he agreed, with an emphatic little laugh. “I never worked so hard in my life!” “Do you remember how I used to sit by the fire here at night, not daring to make the slightest sound, while you worked at your desk, going through all those masses and masses of papers in readiness for the next day of the trial? Do you remember how sometimes you would look up, not saying a word, but just assuring yourself that I was still there and going on with your work all the fresher because you saw me? Do you remember when at last, in the small hours, you finished for the night, you would come across and kiss me, oh, so quietly, and lay your head against me for comfort because you were so tired!” He did not answer. His eyes stared into the fire, his lips thinned in a tight pressure against each other, as the mental picture of the fact came up in conflict with this ideality. They had been terrible, those nights of solitary work. She continued, undeterred. “And then, on the last day of the trial, when you had made that great speech--the first big speech of your career--and got your verdict, the night when all the newspapers were full of your triumph, do you remember your home-coming, dear?” “By Heaven, I do!” he interrupted, with a sudden outburst of bitterness. “I came home and looked around me--and wished that I were dead in the hopeless emptiness of it all!” “No, dear, no!” she corrected him. “You came home and found me waiting for you in my prettiest dress and we had dinner together, just you and I alone, because the moment was so big that we couldn’t possibly share it with any one else. Do you remember how solemn we tried to be, you and I--you looking so dignified in your evening clothes and I just as dainty as I could be? And then suddenly you jumped up like a schoolboy and darted round the table to kiss me--and we kissed and laughed at ourselves, and kissed and laughed again, every time the servants went out of the room--a couple of happy children. And I loved you so much because you were so very clever and yet could be such a boy. And then we got solemn again as the bigness of it all came over us--real, real success at last! The paths of all the world seemed open to us, didn’t they, dear? And we drank to it, success and love! And then, quite close and looking into my eyes, you said the loveliest thing of all the lovely things you ever said to me--you said that your great success, the one success that really mattered to you, was that you had won my love, my real, real love that bound my soul to yours for ever. Oh, Harry, I would have died for you that night!” She ceased and he was silent. The might-have-been came up before him with intolerable vividness. If one could but begin over again!