"Oh, oh! Can I only bore you now by loving you? You can't mean that. Not really and truly. I can't have lost your love so utterly. What have I ever done? Oh, Morris, what have I done? I've never altered to you, and I never would. I would always be faithful to you--always. Is it a curse to have a faithful heart? I can't stop caring for you, because you tell me to; how--how can I? Are you really altogether tired of me? I knew men did get tired, easily, cruelly easily, but somehow----Perhaps if I'd been different? Oh, I did try! I did, always! I did! But there, I've been so utterly miserable lately, it's better really to know the truth straight out at once. Tell me the truth, Morris." "But you know it, my dear." "Tell me, tell me!" "Now what is the good of upsetting yourself like this? Come, come!" "You're going to give that--that woman--my place! Oh! you'll be sorry. She's only selfish and mercenary. She doesn't love you, and I do. You--you don't care for that, though. Oh, how can you?" Morris was feeling awkwardly uncomfortable. He took a flower from a vase, and put it in his buttonhole before he spoke. "I'm perfectly aware," he confessed at length, "that in the abstract Lucinda is neither so handsome, so brilliant, nor so really delightful as you are, but still--still----" He paused. "There, I'm not worth bothering about, so dry your eyes." By a powerful effort of self-command she managed to regain some degree of composure, and to steady her voice. Quite quietly she repeated his words, "not worth bothering about," then, after an interval, "Ah, me!" The tender yearning tone in which this little exclamation came was fraught with significance. After another moment's thought she approached quite close to him, and rested the tips of her fingers upon his chest. "I'm afraid you _are_ worth bothering about, my dear," she went on, making a rather pitiful little attempt to hide her sick anxiety by pretending to smile. Then, after a somewhat protracted pause, she spoke again. "I--I--there, why should I be ashamed to say it again, even now? I love you still--oh, so much! I'm sure I shall always love you. I can't help it. We can't arrange our feelings so that they shall always be convenient and suitable. It was never really right that we should care for one another at all, because--because of your wife, and I would never--no never--have taken her place if you had even so much as hinted that you might one day come to look upon it as something merely temporary; something that could be lightly set aside as soon as you met another woman whom you--liked a bit.