"I don't want to bother you, Reggie," he said one day, when relations had grown less strained between us; "but I just want you to know how dreadfully sorry I am that I behaved as I did. Lady Chayford told me that you couldn't forgive me, and I feel I haven't the right to ask you to forgive me. But I just want to tell you that I am sorry, and that I would give my life to undo what I did." He was lying in his usual place on the couch, and I was sitting in an easy-chair on the other side of the great fire-place. For a few seconds I smoked in silence: then I said: "I hope you understand it isn't that I _won't_ forgive you, Frank, but that _I can't_. I've tried, and I find it impossible." Frank nodded his head in the way that reminded me so keenly of Fay. "I know: Lady Chayford told me. And she also told me how not forgiving me had made you lose your wonderful gift of healing. It is dreadful to think that I had power to spoil your life as much as that!" I smiled sadly at the childishness which made the loss of my healing powers seem greater than the loss of Fay. And then my smile faded as I realised that it is only when we speak as little children that we speak truth; for the loss of my healing powers stood sacramentally for more than even the loss of my wife. It was the outward and visible sign of my separation from God. "I know it's no good saying I'm sorry now, but I must say it," Frank continued; "and I shall go on feeling it as long as I live. I don't really see how you could forgive me: I know I couldn't if I were in your place. In fact, I shouldn't even want to." "I do want to," I said slowly; "but I can't." "But although I own I did my best towards the end to induce Fay to come away with me," continued Frank, in that throaty and rather husky voice which was so like Fay's that sometimes it thrilled my heart-strings to breaking-point, "I can't help saying that she oughtn't to have listened to me. After all, she was bound to you by vows, and I wasn't." I lifted up my hand in protest. "Hush, hush!" I said sternly: "I cannot allow you or anybody else to dare to say a word against my wife." "You are very loyal to her," he replied, after a short pause, in which I did him the justice to believe that he felt ashamed of himself. "I loved her," I said. Then I corrected myself: "I mean I love her." But it was not easy to suppress a Wildacre even when he did feel ashamed of himself. "Then you have forgiven her," said Frank: "Lady Chayford told me you hadn't."