There was a moment’s suggestive silence, and then he said: “I understand. I can be nothing but counsel to you until I apologise. I have not done so before because there is no excuse to offer. I can only explain: you had deceived and outwitted and made a fool of me, and I was furious. Moreover, I was horribly disappointed. I am perfectly well aware that all that is no excuse. I was bitterly ashamed afterwards, and far more furious with myself than I had been with you. I have never ceased to deplore it. We might at least have been friends—” “Ah, you forgave me then?” asked Patience, looking at his flushed face with a smile. He had never looked more awkward nor more attractive. “Oh, yes; my offence was so much worse, you see, I had to.” “Well,” she said, giving him her hand gracefully, “we will forgive each other.” He accepted her hand promptly and evinced no disposition to relinquish it. “You are so cold, though,” he said ruefully. “Your forgiveness is merely indifference. But of course,” hastily, “you are absorbed in much weightier matters than friendship. I can imagine how insignificant all other episodes of your past must seem—” “Oh, if it were not for you I might have been here before to-day, and in a much worse predicament. I doubt if I should have left him as soon as I did if it had not been for your unpleasant truths. I was drifting, and also drifting toward morbidity, where I might have been capable of anything. If I had really killed him and been arrested I should have said so, and even you could not have saved me.” “Oh, it would have been easier: I could have got you off on the plea of insanity. But am I really a link in the chain? I am egoistical—and interested—enough to be—pleased.” “Oh, yes,” she said, laughing a little. “You have had a good deal more to do with forging some of the links than you imagine.” His hand was beginning to tremble, and she withdrew her own. He did not attempt to recapture it, and for a moment they regarded each other defensively. He had avoided the mistake of mistakes for thirty-six years, and the very flavour of romance about his experience with this woman made him wary. She had been mistaken twice and had ordered her imagination to sleep. Something within him pulled her, but none knew better than she the independent activity of sex. Still, like all women, fire was dear to her fingers. His eyes had a gleam in them which made her experience keenly the pleasurable sensation of danger. “Did you know that night that I had forgotten our conversation in the tower?” he said, laughing uneasily. “Well, I will admit that I had, but I certainly remember the conversation in the elm walk—every word of it. It was a singular conversation,” he continued hurriedly. “I have not found her yet, by the way. What is love, anyhow? Something always seems to be lacking. I have wanted a good many women, but there were shallows somewhere.”