These discoveries brought him a strange sense of relief. He had hitherto looked on her loveliness as unapproachable, and the thought of her physical perfection had been a mighty factor in the war that had raged so devastatingly in his heart. But now he saw that it was no longer to be reckoned with. Tony was, in point of fact, more beautiful than Janey. His eyes travelled down from her face, and saw her collar all askew, her blouse hanging sloppily out at the waist, her shoe-string untied. Tony always wore such dainty muslins, such soft, pretty white things.... Then he noticed Janey's hair. For the first time he wondered whether she brushed it often enough. His spirits revived wonderfully during this contemplation, and with them a surge of tender pity towards her. He did not want her to feel humiliated by his unfaithfulness. "Janey, you mustn't think I don't thank you and honour you for all you've been to me." "You don't know what I've been to you." "What do you mean?" "You don't realise what I've sacrificed for you. You talk of Tony Strife's purity and innocence as if it was more to her credit to have them than for me to have given them up--for your sake." "Janey----" "Listen, Quentin. There's one thing this girl will never do for you--I did it--and I think that now you despise me for it, in spite of your words. You don't know what it cost me. I did my best to hide my pain from you, because you were happy; but now I think you ought to know that this thing for which you despise me was--was the greatest act of self-sacrifice in my whole life. Oh, Quentin, I always meant to keep straight, because of my brothers, and because--because I wanted to be pure and good. Oh, I loved goodness and purity--I love them still, quite as much as Tony Strife loves them--and there were the poor boys, with only my example to restrain them. And then I loved you--and you asked me to climb over the gates of Paradise with you, because they would never be unlocked. Oh, God! I yielded because I loved you so. I gave up what was dearer to me than anything else in the world, the one thing I was struggling to keep unspotted, for my own sake and the boys'. I gave it up to you--and now ... and now ... you talk about another woman's purity and innocence." Her voice died into tearless silence. "Janey, you mustn't feel like that--you mustn't think that I reproach you. It's myself I blame--not you." "But you do--you do--and I ought to have known it from the first." He could not speak, the words stuck to his tongue--he wanted to fall at her feet, but could not, for he knew it would be mockery. "I can't say anything," he stammered huskily; "we're just the victims of a damnable mistake, and the less we say about it the better. Each word one of us speaks is a wound for the other. There's only this left-- 'And throughout all eternity I forgive you, you forgive me-- As our dear Redeemer said: This the wine and this the bread.'"