"Two years! Is it only two? To him it must seem like a hundred. But if his strength remains he will go on for thirteen more. Oh! Fay, was any man since the world began so loyal to any woman as your husband and your lover have been to you? You said just now that men were selfish and could not love. I have heard many women say the same. But _you_! How can _you_ say such a thing! To have met one man who was ready to love and serve them is not the lot of many women. Very few of us ever find anything more than a craving to be loved in the stubborn material of men's hearts. And we are thankful enough when we find that. But to have stood between two such men who must have crushed you between them if either of them had had one dishonouring thought of you. A momentary selfishness, a momentary jealousy in either of them, and--where would _you_ have been?" "No one knows how good Michael is better than I do," said Fay, "but what you don't seem to realise is how awful these years have been for _me_. He has suffered, but sometimes I think I have suffered more than he has. No, I don't _think_ it, I _know_ it. He can't have suffered as much as I have." Magdalen put out her hand, and touched Fay's rough head with a tenderness that seemed new even to Fay, to whom she had been always tender. "You have suffered more than Michael," she said. "I have endured certain things in my life, but I could never have endured as you have done the loss of my peace of mind. How have you lived through these two years? What days and nights upon the rack it must have meant!" Oh! the relief of those words. Fay leaned her head against her sister's knee, and poured forth the endless story of her agony. She had someone to confide in at last, and the person she loved best, at least whom she loved a little. She who had never borne a mosquito bite in silence, but had always shewn it to the first person she met, after rubbing it to a more prominent red, with a plaintive appeal for sympathy, was now able to tell her sister everything.