emotion seemed to have become so foreign to her face, that he felt as
if she were already a stranger to him.

She took a last look round the room. Her eyes seemed to devour every
detail.

"I shall find means to give you your freedom at once."

"You will actually leave me--go away?"

"Can we two remain together now?"

"But your children?"

"Your children, Dick--I have forgotten that I have any. I have had my
life. You have still yours to live."

She swept by him down the long room, everything in which was so
closely associated with her. Before she reached the door, he was
there--and his back against it. She stopped, but she did not look at
him. If she could have read the truth in his face, it would have told
her that she had never been loved as she was at that moment. All that
she had been in her loyalty, her nobility, was so much a part of this
man's life. What, compared to that, were petty sins, or big ones? He
saw the past as a drowning man sees the panorama of his existence. Yet
he knew that everything he could say would be powerless to move her.

It was useless to remind her of their happy years together. They could
never be happy again with this between them. It would be equally
useless to tell her that this other woman had known, but too well,