"We left Richmond at ten o'clock yesterday, and we've been here ever since." "What does that matter?" "You mean it doesn't matter that I came away with George and spent twenty-four hours?" "I mean that nothing matters--not if you'd spent twenty-four years." "I suppose it doesn't," she responded quietly, and there was a curious remoteness, a hollowness in the sound of the words. "When one comes to see things as they are, nothing really matters. It is all just the same." Her face looked unsubstantial and wan in the firelight, and so ethereal, so fleshless, appeared her figure, that it seemed to me I could see through it to the shining of the flames before which she stood. "I can't talk, Sally," I said, "I am not good at words, I believe I'm more than half a fool as George has just told me--but--but--I want you--I've always wanted you--I've never in my heart wanted anything in the world but you--" "I don't suppose even that matters much," she answered wearily, "but if you care to know, Ben, George and Bonny found me when I was alone and--and very unhappy, and they brought me with them when they came down to hunt. They are hunting now." "You were alone and unhappy?" I said, for George Bolingbroke and Bonny Marshall had faded from me into the region of utterly indifferent things. "It was that I wanted to tell you the morning you couldn't wait," she returned gently; "I had kept it from you the night before because I saw that you were so tired and needed sleep. But--but I had seen two doctors, both had told me that I was ill, that I had some trouble of the spine, that I might be an invalid--a useless invalid, if I lived, that--that there would never be another child--that--" Her voice faltered and ceased, for crossing the room with a bound, I had gathered her to my breast, and was bending over her in an intensity, a violence of love, crushing back her hands on her bosom, while I kissed her face, her throat, her hair, her dress even, as I had never kissed her in the early days of our marriage. The passion of happiness in that radiant prime was pale and bloodless beside the passion of sorrow which shook me now. "Stop, stop, Ben," she said, struggling to be free, "let me go. You are hurting me." "I shall never stop, I shall never let you go," I answered, "I shall hold you forever, even if it hurts you." CHAPTER XXXV THE ULTIMATE CHOICE