Drake started at the significant tone in which the words were spoken. 'Really?' he said, with an uneasy laugh. 'What impressed me was that scene at Venice, where Gilberte and De Valréas read over the list of plays in the Paris newspapers, and realise what they have thrown away, and for how little. It seemed to me the saddest scene I had ever witnessed.' 'Yes,' interposed Clarice quickly. 'But because Paris and its theatres meant so much to them. I remember what you said, that everything in the play seemed so true just to those characters, Gilberte and De Valréas.' She glanced at him as she uttered the last name. Drake understood that she was drawing a distinction between him and the fashionable lounger of the play. 'Besides,' she went on, dropping her voice, 'Gilberte left a child behind her. Her unhappiness turned on that.' 'In a way, no doubt, but the loss of friends, station, home, counts for something--for enough to destroy her liking for De Valréas at all events.' 'For De Valréas!' insisted Clarice. 'He was not worth the sacrifice.' She paused for a moment, and then continued diffidently. 'There's something else; I hardly like to tell you it. You wouldn't notice it from seeing the play. I didn't; but it came to me when I read the book. I think the play's absolutely untrue, yes, even to those characters, in one respect.' 'And what's that?' asked Drake. Clarice glanced round. Her neighbours, she perceived, were talking. Mrs. Willoughby was too far off to hear. She dropped her voice to a yet lower key and said, 'They make the husband kill the lover in the duel. It's always the end in books and plays; but really the opposite of that would happen.' Drake leant back in his chair and stared at her. 'What do you mean?' 'Hush!' she said warningly, and turning away she spoke for a little to the man on the other side of her. Then she turned back. 'I mean,' she said, 'if two people really care for one another, their love would triumph over everything--everything. De Valréas would have killed the husband.' She spoke with an intense conviction of the truth of what she said. 'But, my dear child!' replied Drake. 'You--oh, you don't really believe that.' 'I do,' she answered. 'You see, there are so few people who really care for one another. If you find two who do, I am sure they would conquer, whatever stood in the way.'