Her bitter despairing words seemed to him what at that moment her mood made them seem to herself, the all-sufficient all-embracing summary of her life; she had then no thought of another side to it, and into that she gave him no insight. He counted as dead for her all the high hopes and the attractive imaginings with which Quisante once had fired her. Dead for her they were at that moment; she could see nothing but her husband's baseness and a baseness bred by it in herself; her bond to him was an obligation to dishonour and a chain of treachery. She abandoned to Marchmont's eyes all the hidden secrets of her misery; in this she seemed also to display before him the dead body of her hopes, her interest, her ambitions. Giving all, she had gained nothing; so her sobs said. But only for moments does life seem so simple that a sob can cover all of it. Presently she grew calmer. "I've never broken out like this before," she said, "but it's rather bad to have to look forward to a life of it. And it'll get worse, not better; or if it doesn't get worse it'll mean that I'm getting worse, and that'll be worse than all." She smiled forlornly. "What a tangle of 'worses' I've tied it up in, haven't I?" She did not seem to be ashamed of her breaking-out, but rather to be relieved by it, and to feel that it had helped to establish or renew an intimacy in which she found some pleasure and some consolation; at least there was one friend now who knew exactly how she stood and would not set down to that own self of hers the actions that he might see her perform in Quisante's service. "You once told me I ought to take a confidante," she reminded him. "I don't suppose you thought I should take you, though." She had had her outburst; his was still to come. Yet it seemed rather as though he acted on a deliberate purpose than was carried away by any irresistible impulse; he spoke simply and plainly. "I love you as I've always loved you," he said. "I know, and I've taken advantage of it to inflict all this on you." Her eyes rested on his for some moments, and she answered his glance. "No, I can't escape that way. I'm not talking of running away; of course I couldn't do that." She laughed a little and even he smiled. "But I can't escape even in--in spirit by it. Sometimes I wish I could. It would change the centre of my life, wouldn't it? Perhaps I shouldn't mind the things that distress me so much now. But I can't." "You don't love me? Well, you never did." He paused an instant and added in a puzzled way, "Somehow."