Margaret laughed. “Oh, I am old-fashioned. I am so old-fashioned that I should have died rather than ruin the happiness of another woman.” The joy faded from Rose Morrison’s face. “It was not I,” she answered. “It was life. We cannot stand in the way of life.” “Life to-day, God yesterday, what does it matter? It is a generation that has grasped everything except personal responsibility.” Oh, if one could only keep the humour! A thought struck her, and she asked abruptly, “When your turn comes, if it ever does, will you give way as I do?” “That will be understood. We shall not hold each other back.” “But you are young. You will tire first. Then he must give way?” Why, in twenty years George would be sixty-five and Rose Morrison still a young woman! Calm, resolute, uncompromising. Rose Morrison held open the door. “Whatever happens, he would never wish to hold me back.” Then Margaret passed out, the door closed behind her, and she stood breathing deep draughts of the chill, invigorating air. Well, that was over. The lawn, with its grave-like mounds of leaves, looked as mournful as a cemetery. Beyond the bare shrubs the road glimmered; the wind still blew in gusts, now rising, now dying away with a plaintive sound; in the west the thread of gold had faded to a pale greenish light. Veiled in the monotonous fall of the leaves, it seemed to Margaret that the desolate evening awaited her. “How he must love her,” she thought, not resentfully, but with tragic resignation. “How he must love her to have sacrificed me as he has done.” This idea, she found as she walked on presently in the direction of the street car, had taken complete possession of her point of view. Through its crystal lucidity she was able to attain some sympathy with her husband’s suffering. What agony of mind he must have endured in these past months, these months when they had worked so quietly side by side on his book! What days of gnawing remorse! What nights of devastating anguish! How this newer love must have rent his heart asunder before he could stoop to the baseness of such a betrayal! Tears, which had not come for her own pain, stung her eyelids. She knew that he must have fought it hour by hour, day by day, night by night. Conventional as he was, how violent this emotion must have been to have conquered him so completely. “Terrible as an army with banners,” she repeated softly, while a pang of jealousy shot through her heart. Was there in George, she asked now, profounder depths of feeling than she had ever reached; was there some secret garden of romance where she had never entered? Was George larger, wilder, more adventurous in imagination, than she had dreamed? Had the perfect lover lain hidden in his nature, awaiting only the call of youth?