She raised her eyes,—her gold hair shone about her like an aureole, and a sudden sweetness softened her face, though its gravity was unchanged. A sharp pang of remorse and sorrow stabbed him through and through, and he looked at her in mingled abasement and yearning. ‘Delicia—must we part?’ He whispered the question, half in hope half in fear. She regarded him steadily. ‘Dare you ask it? Can you imagine I could love you again after what has passed? Some women might do so—I could not.’ He stood irresolute; there was a mean and selfish trouble at his heart to which he could not give utterance for very shame’s sake. He was really wondering what arrangements she meant to make for his future, but some few of the better instincts of manhood rose up within him protestingly, and bade him hold his peace. Still the brooding egotistical thought lingered in him and made him angry; he grew more and more wrathful as he realised that she,—this woman, whose whole life and devotion he had had so recently in his keeping,—had suddenly fathomed his true nature and cast him from her as something contemptible, and that she—she had the power to maintain herself free of him in wealth and ease, whilst he, if she were at all malevolently inclined, would have to return to the state of semi-poverty and ‘living on tick,’ which had been his daily and yearly lot before he met her. Inwardly he cursed ‘la Marina,’ Lily Brancewith and everybody, except himself. He never thought of including his own vices in the general big ‘Damn!’ he was mentally uttering. And as he hesitated, shuffling one foot against the other, a prey to the most disagreeable reflections, Delicia advanced a step and held out her hands. ‘Good-bye, Will! I loved you once very deeply; a few days ago you were everything to me, and for the sake of that love, which has so suddenly perished and is dead for ever, let us part in peace!’ But he turned from her roughly. ‘Oh, it is all very well for you!’ he said. ‘You can afford to talk all this high-falutin’ rubbish, and give yourself airs and graces, but I am a poor devil of a fellow always getting into a hole; and it isn’t to be supposed that I am going to take my dismissal in this way, just as if I were a lackey. I am your husband, you know; you can’t undo that!’ ‘Not at present,’ said Delicia, drawing back from him quickly, the tenderness passing from her face and leaving it coldly disdainful. ‘But it is very possible the Gordian knot of marriage may be cut for me sooner or later. Death may befriend me in this matter, if nothing else will.’