Everything seemed to be slipping away from me. I pushed on to the ugly facts that remained over from the wreck of my interpretation. “What has held me back,” I said, “is the thought that you could not possibly understand certain things in my life. Men are not pure as women are. I have had love affairs. I mean I have had affairs. Passion--desire. You see, I have had a mistress, I have been entangled--” She seemed about to speak, but I interrupted. “I'm not telling you,” I said, “what I meant to tell you. I want you to know clearly that there is another side to my life, a dirty side. Deliberately I say, dirty. It didn't seem so at first--” I stopped blankly. “Dirty,” I thought, was the most idiotic choice of words to have made. I had never in any tolerable sense of the word been dirty. “I drifted into this--as men do,” I said after a little pause and stopped again. She was looking at me with her wide blue eyes. “Did you imagine,” she began, “that I thought you--that I expected--” “But how can you know?” “I know. I do know.” “But--” I began. “I know,” she persisted, dropping her eyelids. “Of course I know,” and nothing could have convinced me more completely that she did not know. “All men--” she generalised. “A woman does not understand these temptations.” I was astonished beyond measure at her way of taking my confession. ... “Of course,” she said, hesitating a little over a transparent difficulty, “it is all over and past.” “It's all over and past,” I answered. There was a little pause. “I don't want to know,” she said. “None of that seems to matter now in the slightest degree.” She looked up and smiled as though we had exchanged some acceptable commonplaces. “Poor dear!” she said, dismissing everything, and put out her arms, and it seemed to me that I could hear the Lettish girl in the background--doomed safety valve of purity in this intolerable world--telling something in indistinguishable German--I know not what nor why.... I took Margaret in my arms and kissed her. Her eyes were wet with tears. She clung to me and was near, I felt, to sobbing. “I have loved you,” she whispered presently, “Oh! ever since we met in Misterton--six years and more ago.” CHAPTER THE THIRD ~~ MARGARET IN VENICE 1