"'I told you, didn't I, that I hadn't reckoned what a bad loser I fundamentally was until I had lost? Well, I hadn't reckoned with the deuce it would play with my health. But, my darling, if I'm grateful to anything in this world it's for that weakness, for it has given me a vision of you, it has given me the "you" that I am talking to now. As I lost all my confidence, everything about me that I had treasured, all those baubles of my luck, I seemed to feel a cloud settling about my head--and I could see you more clearly through that cloud than ever I had through daylight. You grew vivid, touchable, more than ever Iris. At last, I saw you, and I knew--oh, I knew so much that I hadn't known! And since then, Iris, I've tried, I have tried so hard, but it was too late. I hadn't dreamt of the depths of Antony's consistency....' "It was curious, Ronnie, how he seemed to bring my temper round in a circle to that same stiffening point against him. He seemed always to end on that angering weakness, resignedly implying some hurt to us both. But I didn't understand what he meant by his 'too late,' he had said it so inconsequently. His eyes never left my face, I knew he wanted to touch me, wanted me to go to him, that very moment--but my back was stiff against him, I could not move nor speak until I had heard about this new terror to our love, that had suffered so many. "'That oil,' he explained hurriedly, and with a sudden harshness. 'I told you that Antony had worked out an idea how to use it, didn't I? And a damned cunning swindle Cascan Oil was, as efficient a bubble as ever swindled money out of the public. Antony and that engineer got their own back on that oil right enough. And it took me in at first--me, of all people! For, when I said I didn't mind helping Antony let things rip, I didn't mean to let him drag my name through the mud. But _he_ did. And when I found the thing was a barefaced swindle, with just a plausible crust over it, and that it was only an amazing kind of chance that had so far hidden it--my good-luck again, you see, just the swan-song of it, for bubbles aren't so easy to blow as they were--it was too late for me to get out. I had to go on and try to mend it. My name was tacked on to most of the papers.... I think I must have been mad during those first few months after Antony's return not to have enquired more closely--and mad not to have realised the depths of his madness! But I had never dreamed that he wanted to bring my part of the name down even lower than his! I found it out about six weeks ago. Just about the same time that I found you out, Iris, that I found out you did love me--you do, don't you? I can't tell you any more than you can guess about those two realisations, angel and bogey to happen at the same time! But what was the use of cursing Antony? I ought to have known about him. My fault for being a fool, rather than his for being so insanely consistent. And if it hadn't been for you, for what you