“Margaret,” I said, “I'm afraid you'll have to believe it.” 5 Margaret sat very still. When I looked at her again, her face was very white, and her distressed eyes scrutinised me. Her lips quivered as she spoke. “You really mean--THAT?” she said. I nodded. “I never dreamt.” “I never meant you to dream.” “And that is why--we've been apart?” I thought. “I suppose it is.” “Why have you told me now?” “Those rumours. I didn't want any one else to tell you.” “Or else it wouldn't have mattered?” “No.” She turned her eyes from me to the fire. Then for a moment she looked about the room she had made for me, and then quite silently, with a childish quivering of her lips, with a sort of dismayed distress upon her face, she was weeping. She sat weeping in her dress of cloth of gold, with her bare slender arms dropped limp over the arms of her chair, and her eyes averted from me, making no effort to stay or staunch her tears. “I am sorry, Margaret,” I said. “I was in love.... I did not understand....” Presently she asked: “What are you going to do?” “You see, Margaret, now it's come to be your affair--I want to know what you--what you want.” “You want to leave me?” “If you want me to, I must.” “Leave Parliament--leave all the things you are doing,--all this fine movement of yours?” “No.” I spoke sullenly. “I don't want to leave anything. I want to stay on. I've told you, because I think we--Isabel and I, I mean--have got to drive through a storm of scandal anyhow. I don't know how far things may go, how much people may feel, and I can't, I can't have you unconscious, unarmed, open to any revelation--” She made no answer. “When the thing began--I knew it was stupid but I thought it was a thing that wouldn't change, wouldn't be anything but itself, wouldn't unfold--consequences.... People have got hold of these vague rumours.... Directly it reached any one else but--but us two--I saw it had to come to you.” I stopped. I had that distressful feeling I have always had with Margaret, of not being altogether sure she heard, of being doubtful if she understood. I perceived that once again I had struck at her and shattered a thousand unsubstantial pinnacles. And I couldn't get at her, to help her, or touch her mind! I stood up, and at my movement she moved. She produced a dainty little handkerchief, and made an effort to wipe her face with it, and held it to her eyes. “Oh, my Husband!” she sobbed. “What do you mean to do?” she said, with her voice muffled by her handkerchief. “We're going to end it,” I said. Something gripped me tormentingly as I said that. I drew a chair beside her and sat down. “You and I, Margaret, have been partners,” I began. “We've built up this life of ours together; I couldn't have done it without you. We've made a position, created a work--” She shook her head. “You,” she said.