Rose hesitated before she made her appeal. “Listen to me, Dick,” she began, very gently. “I see what you’ve done for Cecily. You’ve restored her confidence in herself for one thing. You’ve given her back her youth--even her beauty; all she was losing, in short. She herself says so. She would never have had the courage to take up life again if it hadn’t been for you.” She paused, and then said suddenly, “Now there’s only one more thing you can do for her--go.” She saw she had struck the right note, but she saw, too, the struggle in his face before he broke out into speech. “But why?” he urged. “Why, in heaven’s name? It isn’t as though there had ever been a word--Cecily only wants my friendship. I know that well enough, worse luck,” he added, with a hopeless want of logic which Rose found pathetic. “I’ve never troubled her with anything else. Gossip, you say? Very well. I’ll see less of her. But to go away----” “It isn’t only that,” interrupted Rose, stemming his torrent of words. “What, then?” She lay back in her chair, and her eyes travelled to the blue sky, and to the tall shaft of the campanile. “All sorts of things,” she answered, slowly. “What an abominably penetrating book the Bible is, when one doesn’t read it too often,” she added, after a moment, with apparent irrelevance. “‘The heart is deceitful above all things’--Robert has discovered that, if I mistake not.” Mayne was silent. “I believe he used to think himself rather a noble fellow at one time,” she went on, “with his higher love and so forth--whatever that may mean.” Mayne uttered a contemptuous exclamation. “Well?” he demanded, “but how does that illustrate my case?” “You talk about Cecily’s friendship,” she returned, “but aren’t you, unconsciously, perhaps, relying a little, just a very little, on that patience from which you hoped so much before she married?” Mayne said nothing. He had seated himself once more in the arm-chair, and Rose was aware of the rigidity of his attitude. It was as though his body had become suddenly frozen. She went on, not quite steadily. “You hate me for saying it, of course. So should I, if I were you. But, Dick--you and I are not by nature self-deceivers. We think straight. And when one person loves, even though the other does not, is it quite safe? There comes a weak moment--a sense of the dreariness of life--gratitude on one side; on the other a strong emotion. Oh, Dick, _you_ know as well as I do.” Mayne raised himself slowly, and bent towards her. When he began to speak it was slowly, also, as though he were feeling for the words. “So now,” he said, “when I’ve helped her to be self-reliant; when she’s found a life of her own, apart from his; now, when he’s thrown over by the woman who has fooled him, _now_ I’m to disappear in order that he may enslave her again!” He rose swiftly, with a bitter laugh, and stood before her. “Oh, you good women! you good women!”