"My dear Duchess, it seems an unconscionable waste of time and life for any one to ignore the inevitable! It's such a prodigal throwing out of the window of riches!" Bulstrode took her hands, both of them, in his as she stood in the winter sunshine, the open house door behind her, the terrace and its broken stairs of crumbling stone before her. "Why, my dear lady, if I kept a diary of daily events I couldn't write down one page of good reasons why you should be living here and Westboro' up there, and I a comic go-between, in the secret of both and the confidence of one." "Oh," she interrupted, "then you're in the confidence...?" "Of your husband, yes," Bulstrode found himself startled into betrayal. She drew her hands from him and walked on a little in the sunshine, and he followed by her side. "I don't mind," she permitted, "you're such a perfect dear. I shouldn't mind at all if I thought that the confidence were a good one." Her tone was light and cool, but the gentleman never failed to notice when the Duchess spoke of the Duke that there was a tremor under her words, a warmth, an agitation, which she vainly tried to control. "Confidences," she said, "are very rarely just, you know, and _les absents ont toujours tort_." "Oh, you don't mean...?" Jimmy emphasized. "It was a confidence, wasn't it?" "A real one," she was assured. "Well then, you'll keep it, of course." She drew the stole up round her long fair neck; her delicate head came out of the soft fur like a flower. But before she could follow up her words Bulstrode said: "You, of course, then know how he loves you." He felt more than knew that she trembled, and he saw an instinctive gesture which he understood meant that he should be silent. "You and I put it quite clearly, Mr. Bulstrode, the other day." Her voice was serene again. "If only one cares enough--that's the necessary thing for every question." "Well?" She half shrugged, made a little motion with her white hands, and this answer said for her: "That is indeed the question, and I haven't solved it." They stopped at the terraced walk. The low stones, dark and black, were filled in their interstices with fine lines of greenish moss. On the sunny corner the dial's shadow fell across the noon. The Duchess put her hand on the warmed stones. "It's a heavenly day," she said, "I don't believe that the Riviera is warmer. I never have seen such an English December." Her eyes, which had been fixed on the woods below the garden, now turned towards the house and rested on one of the upper windows where the sun fell on the little panes. The Duchess remained looking up a few seconds, then she came back to her guest.