"Was it guilt and shame?" she asked in her thrilling voice. "Was it rather not fate? I was married at twenty to a worthless wretch. I was formed to love and be loved, and I found myself tied to a creature like Guy Vernon. Then I met in you the man for whom I was meant and I came into my own. At least I was disinterested, for then you were both poor and obscure. I never had one regret for anything that happened. Do you suppose that Marguerite Gautier regretted, even when she was dying, that she had loved Armand? I always go, when I can, to hear that opera, _La Vie de Bohème_. Mimi’s death is really a triumph of love. Let me tell you this: no woman who ever loved ever regretted it. If she regretted it she did not love. Men feel and act differently about these things. You know you loved me once and you have seemed to hate me ever since, but love will prevail--it will yet prevail." It was a piteous sight to see her with clasped hands and the glory of an undying hope in her eyes and voice. To make her believe that the end had come long since between Sir Percy Carlyon and herself was like fighting a shadow. The resolve took possession of Sir Percy to tell her of Lucy Armytage, and then she might realise the inevitable. "We will speak no more of the past," he said, "and I will tell you what has happened in the present. I have met a woman whom I truly love, and she has promised to marry me." Alicia Vernon turned deathly pale, and stood looking at him with eyes like those of Dido when she saw Æneas sail away from her. She walked steadily to the window and looked with unseeing eyes at the glory of red and gold in which the sun was sinking. Sir Percy Carlyon, standing where she had left him, had to battle with his common-sense. Reason told him that he had done this woman no injury--rather she had injured him--and although Alicia Vernon’s protestation of love for him carried with it conviction of truth, it had not kept her in the straight path. Nevertheless he felt as if he had struck her a physical blow. Presently she came from the window towards the fire, and said to Sir Percy what any woman of forty would say: "The girl you love is young?" "Yes." "That is the way of the world," cried Alicia--"youth is everything. What is it François Coppée says? ’There is nothing for women but a little love when they are young.’ I ask, however, one thing of you. You can scarcely refuse it." Sir Percy remained silent. He did not refuse it, but he was too much on his guard to promise it. "Only this, let me see this woman whom you prefer to me. You think it childish? Very well; all women have something of the child in them." Sir Percy went towards the door, and his face, already dark and flushed, grew still darker. Alicia came up to him and said with pleading in her voice: