"Well, at any rate I can't see what there was to be ashamed of," he replied indignantly. "Of course you can't! Oh, how you good people exasperate me! You seem to lack all comprehension of the natural cravings of a normal human being. Pity? What did I want with pity? I wanted love!" "It was not my fault that I could not love you." "No, but knowing that you did not love me, it was dastardly of you to have married me without telling me the truth. In doing so, you took from me my objective in life--you destroyed my ideals. Oh, don't look so sceptical, you fool! Can't you see that I should never have remained a governess until I was twenty-five, if I had not had ideals? It was because I had such lofty conceptions of love that I kept myself scrupulously aloof from men, so that I might come to my mate, when I found him, with soul, mind, and body unsullied." She spoke with such passionate sincerity that it was with an effort Cyril reminded himself that her past had not been as blameless as she pictured it. "Your fine ideals did not prevent you from becoming a drunkard--" he remarked drily. "When I married, I was not a drunkard," she vehemently protested. "The existence I led was abhorrent to me, and it is true that occasionally when I felt I could not stand it another moment, I would go to my room after dinner and get what comfort I could out of alcohol; but what I did, I did deliberately and not to satisfy an ungovernable appetite. I was no more a drunkard than a woman who takes a dose of morphine during bodily agony is a drug fiend. Of course, my conduct seems inexcusable to you, for you are quite incapable of understanding the torture my life was to me." "Other women have suffered far greater misfortunes and have borne them with fortitude and dignity." "Look at me, Cyril; even now am I like other women?" She drew herself up proudly. "Was it my fault that I was born with beauty that demanded its due? Was I to blame that my blood leaped wildly through my veins, that my imagination was always on fire? But I was, and still am, instinctively and fundamentally a virtuous woman. Oh, you may sneer, but it is true! Although as a girl I was starving for love, I never accepted passion as a substitute, and you can't realise how incessantly the latter was offered me. Wherever I went, I was persecuted by it. At times I had a horrible fear that desire was all that I was capable of evoking; and when you came to me in my misery, poverty, and disgrace, I hailed you as my king--my man! I believed that you were offering me a love so great that it welcomed the sacrifice of every minor consideration. It never occurred to me that you would dare to ask me for myself, my life, my future, unless you were able to give me in exchange something more than the mere luxuries of existence." "I also offered you my life----"