"Then, when I thought I had suffered all that a man could be called upon to suffer, I met Tony--Tony over head and ears in love with quite another woman, as unlike you--oh, your very antithesis! He used to talk to me sometimes. God knows I didn't give him any encouragement! I hated the very sight of him. But he never guessed it. And one day he came and prattled out to me the story of an adventure he had had--at the Dents de Loup--how he got caught up there with a girl. And I knew, then, that it was _your_ adventure, too--though of course he never mentioned your name. But it was as clear as daylight to me. It was as though scales had fallen from my eyes.... I knew then what I'd done. I'd pulled down our house of happiness about our heads. For a time I think I went mad. I could think of nothing except the fact that I'd made it impossible for me ever to come to you again--even to ask your forgiveness." He was silent a moment, leaning his arm on the chimney-piece and shading his face with his hand. When he again resumed it was with a palpable effort and his voice roughened. "Afterwards, when I came to my senses, I saw that I _must_ come to you. I had destroyed my own life--all that was worth while in it. But I had no right to destroy yours. So I've come back--to ask your forgiveness, Ann--if you can give it. And by forgiveness"--he eyed her steadily--"I mean all that forgiveness can hold--not just a mere form of words. I want the love I threw away--the right you once gave me to call myself your lover. If you don't feel you can give it--I shan't complain. I've no right to complain. I shall just go quietly out of your life. But if you can--now you know all--" He broke off. "Ann ... shall I go ... or stay?" He made an involuntary movement towards her, then, checked himself abruptly and stood looking down at her in silence. From the ball-room there floated out the strains of the latest fox-trot, sounding curiously cheap and tawdry as they cut across the deep, almost solemn intensity that prevailed in the quiet room where a man had just stripped his soul naked to the eyes of the woman he loved and now stood as one awaiting judgment. Ann remained silent. Speech seemed for a few moments a physical impossibility. She had been touched to the quick. Step by step she had gone with Eliot down into that place of torment where he had been wandering, suffering an agony of pain of which the keenest pang had taken birth in the bitter knowledge that it was of his own making, and in every fibre of her being she ached to give him back all that he had lost--all that he asked for. Ached to give it back to him complete, whole, unharmed--that love which had been his and which he had so piteously thrown away.