"Mind you, the more particular a man is, the thirstier he'll be. And supposing he can never get a drop of water at home, and every time he goes out, some kind person offers him a drink--can you blame him very much if, some day, he takes it?" "No," she said. She said it very low, and turned her face from him. "Look here, Mrs. Majendie," he said, "you know _why_ I'm saying all this." "To help me," she said humbly. "And to help him. Neither you nor I know whether he's going to live or die. And I've told you all this so that, if he does die, you mayn't have to judge him harshly, and if he doesn't die, you may feel that he's--he's given back to you. D'you see?" "Yes, I see," she said softly. She saw that there were depths in this man that she had not suspected. She had despised Lawson Hannay. She had detested him. She had thought him coarse in grain, gross, unsufferably unspiritual. She had denied him any existence in the world of desirable persons. She had refused to see any good in him. She had wondered how Edith could tolerate him for an instant. Now she knew. She remembered that Edith was a proud woman, and that she had said that her pride had had to go down in the dust before Lawson Hannay. And now she, too, was humbled before him. He had beaten down all her pride. He had been kind; but he had not spared her. He had not spared her; but the gentlest woman could not have been more kind. She rose and looked at him with a strange reverence and admiration. "Whether he lives or dies," she said, "you will have given him back to me." She took up her third night's watch. The nurse rose as she entered, gave her some directions, and went to her own punctual sleep. There was no change in the motionless body, in the drawn face, and in the sightless eyes. Anne sat by her husband's side and kept her hand upon his arm to feel the life in it. She was consoled by contact, even while she told herself that she had no right to touch him. She knew what she had done to him. She had ruined him as surely as if she had been a bad woman. He had loved her, and she had cast him from her, and sent him to his sin. There was no humiliation and no pain that she had spared him. Even the bad women sometimes spare. They have their pity for the men they ruin; they have their poor, disastrous love. She had been merciless where she owed most mercy. Three people had tried to make her see it. Edith, who was a saint, and that woman, who was a sinner; and Lawson Hannay. They had all taken the same view of her. They had all told her the same thing. She was a good woman, and her goodness had been her husband's ruin. Of the three, Edith alone understood the true nature of the wrong she had done him. The others had only seen one side of it, the material, tangible side that weighed with them. Through her very goodness, she saw that that was the least part of it; she knew that it had been the least part of it with him.