She lay quite still, her cheek embossed on the pillow, and a great stray curl over her left shoulder. "Then what would you like to do?" "I should like to go straight back." "To begin the same old life all over again?" "To begin to see him all over again." "Do you think that after last night you can begin to see him in the same old way?" "I must see him in some way." "But isn't the way what you've still to discover?" I resolved on a bold stroke. "Wouldn't part of your object in going away for a time be to think out some method of reconciling your feeling for Mr. Grainger with--with your self-respect?" "My self-respect?" She looked as if she had never heard of such a thing. "What's that got to do with it?" "Hasn't it got everything to do with it? You can't live without it forever." "Do you mean that I've been living without it as it is?" "Isn't that for you to say rather than for me?" She was silent for a minute, after which she said, fretfully: "I don't think it's very nice of you to talk to me like that. You've got me here at your mercy, when I might have been--" A long, bubbling sigh, like the aftermath of tears, laid stress on the joys she had foregone. "He'll never forgive me now--never." "Wouldn't it be better, dear Mrs. Brokenshire," I asked, "to consider whether or not you can ever forgive him?" She raised herself on her elbow and looked at me. Seated in a low arm-chair beside her bed, in an old-rose-colored kimono, my dark hair hanging down my back, I was not a fascinating object of study, even in the light of one small, distant, shaded bedroom lamp. "What should I forgive him for?--for loving me?" "Yes, for loving you--in that way." "He loves me--" "So much that he could see you dishonored and disgraced--and shunned by decent people all the rest of your life--just to gratify his own desires. It seems to me you may have to forgive him for that." "He asked me to do only what I would have done willingly--if it hadn't been for you." "But he asked you. The responsibility is in that. You didn't make the suggestion; he did." "He didn't make it till I'd let him see--" "Too much. Forgive me for saying it, dear Mrs. Brokenshire; but do you think a woman should ever go so far to meet a man as you did?" "I let him see that I loved him. I did that before I married Mr. Brokenshire." "You let him see more than that you loved him. You showed him that you didn't know how to live without him." "But since I didn't know how--" "Ah, but you should have known. No woman should be so dependent on a man as that." She fell back again on her pillows. "It's easy to see you've never been in love." "I have been in love--and am still; but love is not the most important thing in the world--" "Then you differ from all the great teachers. They say it is." "If they do they're not speaking of sexual love." "What are they speaking of, then?"