"He might have come to know," she corrected breathlessly. "There were moments when I dared think so. If I had kept myself true--oh, Peter, these are terrible things to say!" She buried her face in her hands again--a picture of total and abject misery. Her frame shook with sobs that she was fighting hard to suppress. Peter placed his hand gently upon her shoulder. "There, little woman," he tried to comfort. "Cry a minute. It will do you good." "I have n't even the right to cry," she sobbed. "You _must_ cry," he said. "You have n't let yourself go enough. That's been the whole trouble." He was silent a moment, patting her back, with his eyes leveled out of the window as if trying to look beyond the horizon, beyond that to the secret places of eternity. "You have n't let yourself go enough," he repeated, almost like a seer. "You have tried to force your destiny from its appointed course. You have, and Covington has, and I have. We have tried to force things that were not meant to be and to balk things that were meant to be. That's because we've been selfish--all three of us. We've each thought of ourself alone--of our own petty little happiness of the moment. That's deadly. It warps the vision. It--it makes people stone-blind. "I understand now. When you went away from me, it was myself alone I considered. I was hurt and worried, and made a martyr of myself. If I had thought more of you, all would have been well. This time I think I--I have thought a little more of you. It was to get at you and not myself that I wanted to see again. So I saw again. I let go of myself and reached out for you. So now--why, everything is quite clear." She raised her head. "Clear, Peter?" "Quite clear. I'm to go back to my work, and to use my eyes less and my head and heart more. I 'm to deal less with statutes and more with people. Instead of quoting precedents, perhaps I 'm going to try to establish precedents. There's work enough to be done, God knows, of a sort that is born of just such a year as this I 've lived through. I must let go of myself and let myself go. I must think less of my own ambitions and more of the ambitions of others. So I shall live in others. Perhaps I may even be able to live a little through you two." "Peter!" she cried. "For Covington must come back to you as fast as ever he can." "No! No! No!" "You don't understand how much he loves his wife." "Please!" "And, he, poor devil, does n't understand how much his wife loves him." "You--you"--she trembled aghast--"you would n't dare repeat what I've told you!" "You don't want to stagger on in the dark any longer. You'll let me tell him." She rose to her feet, her face white. "Peter," she said slowly, "if ever you told him that, I'd never forgive you. If ever you told him, I 'd deny it. You 'd only force me into more lies. You'd only crush me lower." "Steady, Marjory," he said.