“That is a blasphemy,” said her companion. “No one can be indifferent to health. Ill-health intensifies every other evil and saps the roots of every enjoyment.” “Yet to lie on a sick bed, at peace with man and God, and surrounded by those we love, would that be so sad a fate?” “You speak of what you know nothing about; you are never ill! You grow morbid, Olga. You live like a nun. You see no one. The finest mind cannot resist the morbid influences of constant solitude. Whoever your Pope is, you should ask his dispensation from such vows.” “The law has been my Pope, and has set me free of all vows. I live thus because I do not care to live otherwise.” “I should have thought you too proud a woman to accept excommunication in this submissive way.” She smiled a little. “Proud? I? The daughter of Khristof of Karstein, and the divorced wife of Adrian Vanderlin?” “Curse them both!” said her cousin under his breath. “You have been in London?” he said aloud. “A week, yes: my father’s affairs, as usual.” “You never see him?” “Never. See the man who ruined my life!” “But you have no proof of that?” She smiled again very sadly. “A crime which can be proved is half undone. He was too wary to be traced in all these schemes of infamy.” “Yet you befriend him?” “Befriend? That is not the word. I spend my mother’s money on him for her sake. One saves him at least from public disgrace. But he games away all he gets, and continues to live in the way you know.” “I do not think you should waste your substance on him. Keep it for yourself, and return to the world.” “On sufferance, as a _declasée_? Never!” “As my wife. I have said so many times. I never change, Olga.” She held out her hand to him with a noble and grateful gesture. “You are always faithful. You alone. I thank you. But you must leave me to my fate, dear Ernst. It is not in your power to change it.” “It would be in my power if you gave me the mandate.” “But it is that which I cannot do; which I shall never do.” “Because you still love the man who repudiated and disgraced you!” She shrank a little as at a blow. “One cannot love and unlove at will,” she said simply. “It is very generous of you to be ready to give the shield of your umblemished honor to a dishonored woman. But were I ungenerous, unworthy enough, to accept such a sacrifice I should but make you and make myself more unhappy than we now are. All the feeling which is still alive in me lives only for the memory of the past.” Her cousin turned away and paced the room to hide the pain he felt. He had loved her through good and evil report, had remained unmarried for her sake, and was ready now to accept all obloquy, censure and discredit for her sake. “Go, my dear Ernst,” she said very gently; “go, and forget me. You might as well love a buried corpse as love a woman with such a fate as mine.” “My love should have power to magnetize the corpse into fresh life!” She shook her head.