Every word that he had spoken amongst the amassed beauties of Macmaster furnishings had been a link in a love-speech. It was not merely that he had confessed to her as he would have to no other soul in the world--"To no other soul in the world," he had said!--his doubts, his misgivings and his fears: it was that every word he uttered and that came to her, during the lasting of that magic, had sung of passion. If he had uttered the word "Come" she would have followed him to the bitter ends of the earth; if he had said, "There is no hope," she would have known the finality of despair. Having said neither he said, she knew: "This is our condition; so we must continue!" And she knew, too, that he was telling her that he, like her, was . . . oh, say on the side of the angels. She was then, she knew, so nicely balanced that, had he said, "Will you to-night be my mistress?" she would have said "Yes"; for it was as if they had been, really, at the end of the world. But his abstention not only strengthened her in her predilection for chastity; it restored to her her image of the world as a place of virtues and endeavours. For a time at least she again hummed beneath her breath upon occasion, for it seemed as if her heart sang within her. And there was restored to her her image of her lover as a beautiful spirit. She had been able to look at him across the tea-table of their dog kennel in Bedford Park, during the last months, almost as she had looked across the more shining table of the cottage near the rectory. The deterioration that she knew Mrs. Duchemin to have worked in her mind was assuaged. It could even occur to her that Mrs. Duchemin's madness had been no more than a scare to be followed by no necessary crime. Valentine Wannop had re-become her confident self in a world of at least straight problems.