"Been a fool? I can't forgive myself for that, either. My dear, my dear, you don't love anyone else; you don't hate me. Do you know that your eyes are quite changed from what they were when you came in? And your voice, and your face--everything. Think, dear, if I am not the same woman you loved, I'm still more like her than anyone else in the world. And you did love me--oh, don't hate me for anything I've said. Don't you see I'm fighting for my life? Look at me. I am just like your old sweetheart, only I love you more, and I can understand better now how not to make you unhappy. Ah, don't throw everything away without thinking. I _am_ more like the woman you loved than anyone else can ever be. Oh, my God! my God! what shall I say to him? Oh, God help me!" She had said enough. The one phrase "If I am not the same woman you loved, still I am more like her than anyone else in the world" had struck straight at his heart. It was true. What if this, the second best, were now the best life had to offer? If he threw this away, would any other woman be able to inspire him with any sentiment more like love than this passion of memory, regret, tenderness, pity--this desire to hold, protect, and comfort, with which, ever since her tears fell on his hand, he had been fighting in fierce resentment. He looked at the huddled grey figure. He must decide--now, at this moment--he must decide for two lives. But before he had time to decide anything he found that he had taken her in his arms. "My own, my dear," he was saying again and again, "I didn't mean it. It wasn't true. I love you better than anything. Let's forget it all. I don't care for anything now I have you again." "Then why--" "Oh, don't let's ask each other questions--let's begin all over again at two years ago. We'll forget all the rest--my dear--my own!" Of course neither has ever forgotten it, but they always pretend to each other that they have. Her defiance of the literary sense in him and in her was justified. His literary sense, or some deeper instinct, prompted him to refuse to use Benoliel's money--but her acquiescence in his decision reversed it. And they live very comfortably on the money to this day. The odd thing is that they are extremely happy. Perhaps it is not, after all, such a bad thing to be quite sure, before marriage, that the second-best happiness is all you are likely to get in this world. A HOLIDAY