But at last Roger drew himself away. He rose to his feet.
"I'll forgive you much for that!" he said with a long breath. "Will you write it for me some day--all you've told me?"
"Well, now, you mustn't stay here any longer. I suppose you've got a carriage? And we mustn't meet again. There's no object in it. But I'll remember that you came."
She looked at him. In her nature the great deeps were breaking up. She saw him as she had seen him in her first youth. And, at last, what she had done was plain to her.
With a cry she threw herself on the floor beside him. She pressed his hand in hers.
"Roger, let me stay! Let me nurse you!" she panted. "I didn't understand. Let me be your friend! Let me help! I implore--I implore you!"
He hesitated a moment, then he lifted her to her feet decidedly, but not unkindly.
"What do you mean?" he said, slowly. "Do you mean that you wish us to be husband and wife again? You are, of course, my wife, in the eye of English law, at this moment."
"Let me try and help you!" she pleaded again, breaking into bitter tears. "I didn't--I didn't understand!"
"You can't help me. I--I'm afraid I couldn't bear it. We mustn't meet. It--it's gone too deep."
He thrust his hands into his pockets and walked away to the window. She stood helplessly weeping.
When he returned he was quite composed again.
"Don't cry so," he said, calmly. "It's done. We can't help it. And don't make yourself too unhappy about me. I've had awful times. When I was ill in New York--it was like hell. The pain was devilish, and I wasn't used to being alone, and nobody caring a damn, and everybody believing me a cad and a bully. But I got over that. It was Beatty's death that hit me so hard, and that I wasn't there. It's that, somehow, I can't get over--that you did it--that you could have had the heart. It would always come between us. No, we're better apart. But I'll tell you something to comfort you. I've given up that girl, as I've told you, and I've given up drink. Herbert won't believe it, but he'll find it is so. And I don't mean to die before my time. I'm going out to Switzerland directly. I'll do all the correct things. You see, when a man _knows_ he's going to die, well," he turned away, "he gets uncommonly curious as to what's going to come next."