In reality, there had been no doubt in her mind in regard to her husband, though possibly she would have denied, even to herself, that her decision was formed before she came with the problem to the man that loved her. It was not her duty to Emmet that distressed her, but whether Leigh loved her still. This was what she wished to know, and now his manner told her more than his words. "Don't say you deserved to lose my confidence," she protested quickly. "It was I who deserved to lose yours." The attitude her coming demanded of him was cruelly difficult to maintain, and he sought help from action. "We 'll let bygones be bygones, then," he answered brusquely; but his brusqueness pleased her. "Take this chair by the fire." "The question is one of duty," she began again. He flung himself into another chair on the opposite side of the fireplace, locked his fingers about one knee, and regarded her judicially, as if his whole mind were concentrated upon the problem she was stating. In reality, he was absorbed by the extraordinary nature of the situation, and lost in admiration of the picture she presented. Were she posing for a portrait to be painted, she could not have chosen her position more effectively. The firelight brought out a golden tone from her brown skirt. It was lost in the softness of her velvet waist and hair, to reappear mysteriously in her eyes. She had thrown her crimson cloak over the back of the chair, and it formed a rippling band of colour on each side of her figure. Surely, here was a Portrait of a Lady that would have made an artist famous, could he have done it to the life. She spoke of her struggle with Emmet as it she were stating an hypothetical case for his dispassionate consideration. Her apparent coolness filled him with amazement, but he recognised that she had adopted the only attitude that could justify the interview and preserve her own dignity. His emotions were held in suspension; he even felt he had none, so compelling was the effect of her serious and impersonal frankness. Yet he saw she was not really frank with him. She omitted entirely to mention certain elements in the situation which she must have known that he knew from her husband's confession to him. His eyes, fixed upon her own, were filled with speculation, and he was unconscious of the inquisitorial effect they produced upon her. He was thinking how very different she was from what he had at first supposed, and how this gradual opening of his eyes to hitherto unsuspected vistas of her character had not changed for one moment the fact of his love for her. She might vacillate and doubt,--she seemed to do so now,--but questionings, retreats, advances, refusals, were for women.