"And was she?" he asked, looking at the woman of whom, once the illusion of her love was shattered and the first chagrin was allayed, he had scarcely thought in all those years. "It's hardly fair to ask me that now, Pierre. You forget that I am married and the mother of three children." "I am not married," he murmured, drawing his chair a little closer. "You have been otherwise occupied." "I had to occupy myself." By now Pierre's chair had made a ruck in the carpet, at which he would have to put it like a horse at a fence if he wished to draw still closer to Mary; but rising boldly he seated himself in another chair at least three feet nearer. "I had to occupy myself," he repeated. "When you wrote me that letter I was ... but what right have I to speak of my feelings now? I must consider myself lucky that I was able to forget them in my new career." "Time works miracles," Mary sighed. "I've often wondered where you were and what you were doing." "I have wondered about you. _Mon Dieu_, how I have wondered! And I used to think about Mac." Mary's eyes filled with tears. "Pierre! You remembered my little dog! He only died last week. He was run over, and my husband had to shoot him." "Your husband," he repeated in gloomy tones. "I do not have to refer to my wife. I have never married." "You did not remain single on my account," she said. Pierre paused for a moment as if he were trying to resist the temptation to tell her that it was on her account. But the forms of Malagasy maidens floated within the smoke of his cigarette, and forbade him to claim too straight a fidelity. "If I had ever found the right woman, I suppose I should have married. But the kind of life I was leading demanded the right kind of woman to share it. Ah, Mary, if only you could have shared it! If only...." He leaned over, and taking her hand from the arm of her chair upon which it was resting he raised it slowly to his lips. Mary was not so much astonished at herself as she felt she ought to be, as perhaps she would have been if Jemmie had not shown so clearly his indifference to her during these last few months. Pierre could not have been holding her hand like this if Jemmie had come back to dinner. "Ought you to be taking my hand like this?" she asked. He paid no attention to the question, but went on talking. "With the right kind of woman at one's side what might not a man achieve?" he demanded. "Here are you in London leading the life of thousands of other women, when with me you might have become as famous as the wife of Garibaldi." "I don't think I should care to be famous, Pierre," she murmured with a shake of the head. "I'd like you to be famous. But I don't want fame." "No, no, you want love," he cried. "And it is not too late even now."