“Husband,” she said abruptly, holding her two hands out to me, “I want to begin over again!” I took her hands, perplexed beyond measure. “My dear!” I said. “I want to begin over again.” I bowed my head to hide my face, and found her hand in mine and kissed it. “Ah!” she said, and slowly withdrew her hand. She leant forward with her arm on the sofa-back, and looked very intently into my face. I felt the most damnable scoundrel in the world as I returned her gaze. The thought of Isabel's darkly shining eyes seemed like a physical presence between us.... “Tell me,” I said presently, to break the intolerable tension, “tell me plainly what you mean by this.” I sat a little away from her, and then took my teacup in hand, with an odd effect of defending myself. “Have you been reading that old book of mine?” I asked. “That and the paper. I took a complete set from the beginning down to Durham with me. I have read it over, thought it over. I didn't understand--what you were teaching.” There was a little pause. “It all seems so plain to me now,” she said, “and so true.” I was profoundly disconcerted. I put down my teacup, stood up in the middle of the hearthrug, and began talking. “I'm tremendously glad, Margaret, that you've come to see I'm not altogether perverse,” I began. I launched out into a rather trite and windy exposition of my views, and she sat close to me on the sofa, looking up into my face, hanging on my words, a deliberate and invincible convert. “Yes,” she said, “yes.”... I had never doubted my new conceptions before; now I doubted them profoundly. But I went on talking. It's the grim irony in the lives of all politicians, writers, public teachers, that once the audience is at their feet, a new loyalty has gripped them. It isn't their business to admit doubt and imperfections. They have to go on talking. And I was now so accustomed to Isabel's vivid interruptions, qualifications, restatements, and confirmations.... Margaret and I dined together at home. She made me open out my political projects to her. “I have been foolish,” she said. “I want to help.” And by some excuse I have forgotten she made me come to her room. I think it was some book I had to take her, some American book I had brought back with me, and mentioned in our talk. I walked in with it, and put it down on the table and turned to go. “Husband!” she cried, and held out her slender arms to me. I was compelled to go to her and kiss her, and she twined them softly about my neck and drew me to her and kissed me. I disentangled them very gently, and took each wrist and kissed it, and the backs of her hands. “Good-night,” I said. There came a little pause. “Good-night, Margaret,” I repeated, and walked very deliberately and with a kind of sham preoccupation to the door. I did not look at her, but I could feel her standing, watching me. If I had looked up, she would, I knew, have held out her arms to me....