The two sat silent, opposite each other, as if they had reached a point beyond which words could not carry their communion. Nona's mind, racing forward, touched the extreme limit of human bliss, and then crawled back from it bowed and broken-winged. "But _only_ on that condition," Aggie began again, with deliberate emphasis. "On condition--that he marries me?" Aggie made a motion of assent. "I have a right to impose my conditions. And what I want is"--she faltered suddenly--"what I want is that you should save him from Cleo Merrick..." Her level voice broke and two tears forced their way through her lashes and fell slowly down her cheeks. "Save him from Cleo Merrick?" Nona fancied she heard herself laugh. Her thoughts seemed to drag after her words as if she were labouring up hill through a ploughed field. "Isn't it rather late in the day to make that attempt? You say he's already gone off with her." "He's joined her somewhere--I don't know where. He wrote from his club before leaving. But I know they don't sail till the day after tomorrow; and you must get him back, Nona, you must save him. It's too awful. He can't marry her; she has a husband somewhere who refuses to divorce her." "Like you and Stanley!" Aggie drew back as if she had been struck. "Oh, no, no!" She looked despairingly at Nona. "When I tell you I don't refuse now..." "Well, perhaps Cleo Merrick's husband may not, either." "It's different. He's a Catholic, and his church won't let him divorce. And it can't be annulled. Stanley's just going to live with her ... openly ... and she'll go everywhere with him ... exactly as if they were husband and wife ... and everybody will know that they're not." Nona sat silent, considering with set lips and ironic mind the picture thus pitilessly evoked. "Well, if she loves him..." "Loves him? A woman like that!" "She's been willing to make a sacrifice for him, at any rate. That's where she has a pull over both of us." "But don't you see how awful it is for them to be living together in that way?" "I see it's the best thing that could happen to Stanley to have found a woman plucky enough to give him the thing he wanted--the thing you and I both refused him." She saw Aggie's lifeless cheek redden. "I don't know what you mean by ... refusing..." "I mean his happiness--that's all! You refused to divorce him, didn't you? And I refused to do--what Cleo Merrick's doing. And here we both are, sitting on the ruins; and that's the end of it, as far as you and I are concerned." "But it's not the end--it's not too late. I tell you it's not too late! He'll leave her even now if you ask him to ... I know he will!" Nona stood up with a dry laugh. "Thank you, Aggie. Perhaps he would--only we shall never find out." "Never find out? When I keep telling you--"