"You see it is all pitiful," she continued, her voice deep and broken with almost a sob in it. "Denzil is so like you--it was an easy transition to find that I loved him--because I was only loving the imaginary you I had made for myself. I cannot explain myself and do not make any excuse. There is something in me, whenever I think of the baby, that draws me to Denzil and makes me remember that night. John, we must just face the situation and try to find some way to avoid as much pain as we can. I hate to think it is hurting you, too." "Did Denzil tell you this?" his voice was icy cold. "No--it came to me suddenly when I heard him say a word." "'Sweetheart'!" and now John's eyes flashed. "He called you again 'Sweetheart'!" "No, he did not--he used the word simply in speaking of a picture--but I recognised his voice then immediately--it is a little deeper than yours." "When did you see Denzil?" She told him the exact truth about their meeting and his coming to Ardayre, and how Denzil had endeavoured to keep his word. "He would never have spoken to me--it was fate which sent him into the train, and then I made him speak--I could not bear it. After I recognised him, I made him admit that it was he. Denzil is not to blame. He left immediately and I have never seen him or heard from him since. It is I alone who must be counted with, John--Denzil will try never to see me again." John groaned aloud. "Oh God--the misery of it all!" "John, I must tell you everything now while we are talking of these things. I love Denzil utterly. I thrill when I think of him; he seems to me my husband, not even only a lover. John, not long ago, when I felt the first movement of the child, I shook with longing for him--I found myself murmuring his name aloud. So you must think what it all means to me, so strongly passionate as I am. But I would never cheat you, John--I had to be honest. I could not go on pretending to be your wife and living a lie." Tears of agony gathered in John Ardayre's blue eyes and rolled down his cheeks. He suddenly understood the suffering, that she, too, must be undergoing. What right had he to have taken this young and loving woman and then to have used her for his own aims, however high? "Amaryllis--you cannot forgive me. I see now that I was wrong." But the sympathy which she had felt when she had looked at him from the piano welled up again in Amaryllis's heart and drowned all resentment. She knew that he must be enduring pain greater than hers, so she stretched out her hands to him, and he took them and held them in his. "Of course, I forgive you, John--but I cannot cease from loving Denzil, that is the tragedy of the thing. I am his really, not yours, even if I never see him again, and that is why we must not make any pretences. John dearest, let us be friends--and live as friends, then everything won't be so hard."