"Oh, it will be 'moonlight after sunlight,'" says Lauraine, bitterly, "if I may copy Tennyson and say so. Why should he make a martyr of himself? I can be nothing to him, and it is all shame, and sin, and horror now. Oh, God! that I should live to say so--my darling boy----" A sob breaks from her. She thinks of Keith--bold, bright, _debonnaire_ Keith, with his sunny smile and his bold, bright eyes that for her were always so soft and loving; Keith, with his merry ways and wild freaks, and steadfast, tender heart; Keith as he _was_, as he never again can be to her, in all the years to come! "It is all my fault--mine!" she cries between her heavy sobs. "And I have made him so unhappy; and if he goes to the bad, if he gets wild and reckless, oh, what shall I do? How can I sit and bear my life, and look on _his_, as if it were nothing to me?" Lady Etwynde kneels beside her and puts her arms round her in silence. "It will be hard, terribly hard," she says, tenderly. "But oh, my dear, you have had strength to do what was right to-day. You will have strength to bear the consequences." "Was it right?" wails Lauraine, in exceeding bitterness. "He said not. He called me cold and calculating, and said I have spoilt all his life now, and he is so young, and I---- Oh, how I could love him now!" "Hush!" whispers Lady Etwynde, gently; "you must not think of that. Right! Of course it was right, Men are so selfish, that unless a woman ruins herself for their sake they will always say she does not love. _Love!_ Faugh, the word as they mean it is different to our interpretation. I have not patience to think of it. Love is something purer, holier, nobler than sensual gratification. It is sympathy, it is fidelity without reward; it is consecration without a vow. Did we take our teaching of it from _them_, Heaven help us all. Thank God, something within us helps us to the right, the pure, the better part of it. Lauraine, do not waste your pity thus. What right had he to dishonour you in your grief, your loneliness, by any such words as these? If indeed he loved you, you should have been sacred to him for your child's sake, even though he ignored your husband. Can you not see it too, dear? As for saying you have ruined his life, that is cowardly. He does not love you worthily or he would never have uttered so weak a reproach." She ceases. She feels the shudder that runs through the slender figure. She knows her words hurt and sting, but she is pained and angered and sore distressed. She feels a hatred and intolerance of Keith Athelstone's selfish passion. "You do not know," murmurs Lauraine; "you cannot judge. Of love no one can, save just the two who love. For them it is all so different, and everything else looks of such small account." A warm flush comes over her face; she dashes the tears away from her eyes. Lady Etwynde unloosens the clasp of her arms, and stands up, a little stern, a little troubled.