“It doesn’t make all that difference to you,” he said roughly. “You wouldn’t have gone with him.” She turned her face to him for a moment. She did not look her best; how could she? But Mr Byers did not notice that. “I love him; and I wanted to do it.” Byers had “wanted to do it” too, and their desires had clashed. But in his desire there had been no alloy of love; it was all true metal, true metal of self. He stood over her for a minute without speaking. A strange feeling seized him then; he had felt it once before with regard to this woman. “If it had been for you I’d have damned the money and gone ahead,” he blurted out in an indistinct impetuous utterance. Again she looked up; there was no surprise, no resentment in her face, only a heart-breaking plaintiveness. “Oh, why couldn’t you be honest with me?” she moaned. But she stopped sobbing and sat straight on the sofa again. “You’ll think me still more of a fool for doing this,” she said. Was the abuse never coming? Mr Byers began to long for it. If he were abused enough, he thought that he might be able to find something to say for himself. “You think that because--because I live as I do, I know the world and--and so on. I don’t a bit. It doesn’t follow really, you know. Fancy my thinking I could do anything for Julian! What do I know of business? Well, you’ve told me now!” “If it had been for you I’d have risked it and gone ahead,” said Byers again. “I don’t know what you mean by that,” she murmured vaguely. Byers did not try to describe to her the odd strong impulse which had inspired his speech. “I must go and tell the Prince about it,” she said. “What are you going to do?” he demanded. “Do? What is there to do? Nothing, I suppose. What can we do?” “I wish to God I’d--I’d met a woman like you. Shall you marry him now?” She looked up; a faint smile appeared on her face. “Yes,” she said. “It doesn’t matter now; and he’ll like it. Yes, I’ll marry him now.” Two visions--one was of Mrs Byers and the babies in Portland Place--rose before Byers’ thoughts. “He hasn’t lost much then,” he said. “And you? You’ll be just as happy.” “It was the whole world to me,” said she, and for the last time she put her handkerchief to her eyes. Then she stowed it away in her pocket and looked expectantly at her visitor; here was the permission to go. “Will you take the money?” said he. “What money?” “What I’ve made. My share of it.” “Oh, don’t be silly! What do I care what money you’ve made?” He spoke lower as he put his second question. “Will you forgive me?” he asked. “Forgive you?” She laughed a little, yet looked puzzled. “I don’t think about you like that,” she explained. “You’re not a man to me.” “You’re a woman to me. What am I to you then?”