To say now that he did not know, that he could not conceive which way those two women had for certain directed their steps would, Bevill recognised, be but to add one more equivocation, one more evasion of the absolute truth, to those he had been obliged to perpetrate in his desire to escape with Sylvia from Liége. But now--and if he could welcome the perilous position in which he stood he was almost brought to do so by De Violaine's last utterance--equivocations, evasions, were no longer necessary. Henceforth, since he had failed and Sylvia had escaped from Liége, and also was undoubtedly either with the English or some portion of the Allies, he need never again utter one word that was not absolutely a true one. He had failed in that which he had undertaken, yet, he thanked God, that failure mattered not. Out of it had at least come the escape of her he loved. He stood, therefore, before De Violaine neither asserting nor denying the last words of the other; while that other, observing the calm frankness of his manner, thought that, should there be any future before this man, should he and the woman he loved ever come by any chance together, how proud, how happy in her possession of him, should that woman be. A moment later he said, perhaps as though desirous of answering his own suggestion, perhaps of showing his prisoner that he, too, was under no doubt of where Sylvia and her friend--the one a woman the prisoner loved, the other the woman he loved--were. "Doubtless," he said, "they are not very far. Venloo has fallen," and De Violaine sighed as he told of one more defeat to his country. "To Marlborough!" "To the Allies at least. Marlborough draws near. Yet Liége may not fall so easy a prey to him as other of these towns and cities have done. If Tallard returns from the Rhine, if Boufflers but succours us--ah! England cannot win for ever!" "The time is almost past," Bevill said now, and even as his words fell from him the noble heart of De Violaine, the heart of the man who held this other in his grasp, was full of pity and compassion; "the time is almost past when it matters for me whether Marlborough or Tallard reaches Liége first, whether England or France wins at last. My day is almost done. But to go leaving her behind, unmarried yet widowed, since no other man will ever win the love she gave to me; to leave her to a long life cheerless and blank! Ah! ah!" he murmured, breaking off, "I dare not, must not think of that," while, his manly stoicism giving way, he turned his back on the other so that he should not see his face, and moved towards the deep embrasure of the window.