"Oh, is she? I hope it’s to some one—" "It’s to some one as true-blue as she." "She is true-blue, Billy. I see that now. She—she must be to have wanted to do what she did for ... a woman like me, who—" She took a step or two toward one of the cases, where she pretended to examine the luster of a great Moorish plaque. "She’s an erratic little thing," I said, finding it easier to talk of a third person rather than of ourselves, "all pluck, and high spirit, and good heart, harum-scarum, and yet a great deal wiser than you’d think." She turned round from the plaque without coming nearer to me. "I just want to say that the things she told me, the things she pretended to betray, were things I knew more or less already. I’d been coming to the same conclusions for myself, only I hadn’t quite reached them.... And then you came back, and everything was so strange ... after I’d been in mourning for you ... and given those prints as a memorial in your name! I wish—" I detected something like a sob—"I wish you could make some allowances for me, Billy." The minute was a hard one for me, but I stood my ground: "I make all allowances, Vio; I’ve no hard feelings whatever." She advanced toward me by a pace. "Then will you do this for me? If I can find a way to—to give you your liberty will you—will you marry Mildred Averill, and—and be happy?" Though my heart was going wild I know my eyes must have been cold as I said: "I can’t promise you that, Vio, for a double reason. First, I’m not in love with her; and then she’s not in love with me." "Oh, but I thought she was. Everybody says so." "Who’s everybody?" "Well—well, Alice Mountney." "I can see how Alice Mountney might make that mistake; but it is a mistake, Vio, and please let my saying so convince you. I’ll be quite frank with you and say that I thought so once myself. I’ll even go so far as to say that at one time, if everything had been different, it might have happened. But—but everything was as it was, and so— Well, the long and short of it is that there’s nothing in it, and I must beg you to take that as decisive." "Then—then, who is it?" "No one. I’ve found my work, a very humble work, as you’ve just seen." "A very fine and useful work." "I hope so; and I’m not—not unhappy, specially." She moved along the line of cases, as if carelessly examining the contents. "What’s that?" she asked, coming to a pause. Obliged to go close to her, I was careful not to touch so much as the surface of her clothes. "It’s just a cup and saucer, Ludwigsburg, an old Rhine valley factory now extinct. They liked those little fancy scenes." "It seems to be a woman pleading with a man, doesn’t it?" "It looks like that. It probably means nothing beyond a bit of decoration." "And he seems so implacable, while she’s down on her knees, poor thing!" She looked round at me. "Are you busy here still?" "Oh, there are always things to do. Why?"