"I've prayed my husband to give up," she said, "I don't beg you not to give up. To begin with, you wouldn't listen to me any more than he did. And then, I suppose, you're right for yourself." "You're about the only person who'll say so." "I daresay. I've learnt about you in learning about myself. And I can feel it just as you do--Oh, how intolerably strongly sometimes!" She added with a smile, "We've only just missed suiting one another," and then, "Yes, but we have missed, you know." "I don't believe it," he persisted, struggling to throw off the new doubt she was thrusting into his mind. His thought was that, once she got free of her husband, she would indeed be his. That he must hold to. It was Quisante, not she herself, who made her now feel strange to him; and Quisante's spell was not to last; her quiet certitude that her husband's days were numbered carried conviction to him also. "But I won't talk any more about it now," he said. "No, it seems inhuman," she agreed. "I spend all my days cheating myself into a hope that he'll get better. I know you don't like him, but if you lived with him as I do, you'd come to hope as I do. Yes, in spite of all you know about us; and you know more than anybody alive. I've not been so--so disloyal--to anybody else." She smiled as she quoted the word against him. "One must admire him," said Marchmont. May Quisante laughed at his tone almost scornfully. "The way you say that shows how little you understand," she exclaimed. "It's not a bit like that." She took a step nearer to him. "When it comes," she said slowly, "I shan't shed a single tear, but I shall feel that my life's over. He'll have had it all." "God forbid you should feel anything like that," he said, looking up at her. She laughed again, asking bitterly, "Does God forbid what Alexander wants--except one thing? And what I tell you is what he would want. He would want to have had it all." He raised his hand in protest. "You're right; we won't talk any more," she said. "But don't think that it's all only because I'm overwrought, or something feminine of that kind. It's the truth. When it comes, Aunt Maria'll die and I shall live; but the difference won't be as great as it sounds." This time he was about to speak, but she stopped him, saying, "No, no more now. Tell me about Dick Benyon. He's to have your seat, isn't he?" "Yes, I'm gathered to my fathers, and Dick reigns in my stead." "You're sorry?" she asked, forgetting Dick and coming back again to the man before her. "Yes; but I accept the inevitable and contrive to be quite cheerful about it." "We don't do either of those things. Hark, I hear my husband's step."