"I do not think, too, that it was so easy to discover at the beginning." There rose before Tony's eyes the picture of a ketch-rigged boat sailing at night over a calm sea. A man leaned over the bulwarks, and the bright glare from a lightship ran across the waves and flashed upon his face. Tony remembered the moment very clearly when he had first hit upon his plan; he remembered the weeks of anxiety of which it was the outcome. No, the road had not been easy to find at the beginning. He was silent for a minute, and then he said gently-- "I am sorry that I asked you to tell your story--I am sorry that I did not leave the decision to you. But it shall be as though you told it of your own accord." The sentence was a concession, no less in the manner of its utterance than in the words themselves. Millie took heart, and told him the whole story of her dealings with Lionel Callon, without excuses and without concealments. "I seemed to mean so much to him, so little to you," she said. "You see, I did not understand you at all. You were away, too, and he was near. I do not defend myself." She did not spare herself, she taxed her memory for the details of her days; and as she spoke the story seemed more utterly contemptible and small than even she in her abasement had imagined it would be. But she struggled through with it to the end. "That night when you stood beneath the windows in Berkeley Square," she said, "he was with me. He ran in from Lady Millingham's party and talked with me for half an hour. Yes, at the very time when you were standing on the pavement he was within the house. I know, for you were seen, and on the next day I was told of your presence. I was afraid then. The news was a shock to me. I thought, 'Suppose you had come in!'" "But, back there, in the room," Tony interrupted, "you told me that you wished I had come in." "Yes," she answered. "And it is quite true; I wish now that you had come in." She told him of the drive round Regent's Park, and of the consent she gave that night to Lionel Callon. "I think you know everything now," she said. "I have tried to forget nothing. I want you, whatever you decide to do, to decide knowing everything." "Thank you," said Tony, simply. And she added-- "I am not the first woman I know who has thrown away the substance for the shadow." Upon the rest of that walk little was said. They went forward beneath the stars. A great peace lay upon sea and land. The hills rose dark and high upon their left hand, the sea murmured and whispered to them upon the right. Millie walked even more slowly as they neared the hotel at Eze, and Tony turned to her with a question-- "You are tired?" "No," she answered.