“Unless he happened to like the person,” I said. “I can’t imagine a single point on which he agreed with you or Violet or Amy, but he was devoted to you all. On the other hand, I’ve heard him trouncing poor Sonia for holding exactly the same views, simply because he thought her second-rate.” “He thought all women second-rate. So do you, George,” she rejoined without malice. So sweeping a misstatement I could not allow to pass unchallenged. “I’ll leave you out for fear of embarrassing you . . .,” I began. Barbara laughed sadly and turned, with a shrug, to the fire: “No, my dear, you’re leaving me out because you despise me. Not _cruelly_, but just in the Oakleigh way: as a tolerant Turk would despise me. In your eyes, we’ve never grown up; and sometimes you shew us the tenderness you’d shew to a child. You think we’re creatures who’ve failed to be men; you don’t imagine that we’ve never tried to be men. . . . You smile benignly on our little foibles and follies and frailties just as I smile at a kitten chasing its own tail. ‘Kittens will be kittens,’ I say; ‘women will be women,’ you murmur to yourself.” “The trouble is that you speak the same language . . .” “But we don’t think the same thoughts. D’you remember my telling you I’d forgotten certain things you’d said?” As her eyes turned slowly to meet mine, I thought I could see a gentle new light of friendship. “I wished at the time you’d said you had forgiven them,” I answered. “There was nothing to forgive. You were right, from your point of view. May I speak of it?” “If it will help us.” Barbara turned once more to the fire and sat with her cheek resting against her hand: “It’s just two years since Eric died. You think I’m not in love with him and never was. Well, I’m not now, but I was once; and the _whole_ of my heart went into it, George. Do men ever realize that women can be in love with them and yet know all the time that it’s a mistake? When he left me, Eric thought I’d been taking all his love for my own selfish, greedy enjoyment. I hadn’t. I took it because I couldn’t help myself; but I always knew it would be a mistake for us to marry. We were too much alike, too highly-strung. If you can imagine two great musicians marrying . . . If only I’d been strong enough to refuse his love! I couldn’t help myself . . . It was wrong of me, by any standard, to do what I did at Croxton. If I’d told you at the time . . .” “I should have thought nothing of it, I hope.” Barbara laughed mirthlessly and crossed to my chair, where she seated herself on the arm. “That’s what I feared,” she whispered. “I knew I was wrong, I knew it would have been hell for us all if Eric had agreed, I’d had the worst rebuff that can come to a woman, I was still in love with him. All that, you’d have said, was nothing. A perfect Oakleighism! . . . Yet I wish now I _had_ told you. Eric’s letter must have been a cruel shock.” Her hand stole timidly to mine; and I raised it to my lips: