"And his great bright passion for another person went in. Your explanation would doubtless be perfection if he didn't love you." Owen's bewilderment visibly increased. "You think, then, as she does, that I must send down the police?"!

"You're not all right—you're all wrong!" Fleda cried in despair. "You mustn't stay here, you mustn't!" she repeated with clear decision. "You make me say dreadful things, and I feel as if I made you say them." But before he could reply she took it up in another tone. "Why in the world, if everything had changed, didn't you break off?" Rather musingly and absently Fleda shook her head. "I don't mind anything."

"That he would give his ears to get you?" Mrs. Gereth broke in. "I had a visit from Mrs. Brigstock." "That's your great feeling about him," Fleda said; "but how, after what has happened, can it be his about you?" "We're together, we're together," Mrs. Gereth lifelessly repeated. "That's all we are now; it's all we have." The words brought to Fleda a sudden vision of the empty little house at Ricks; such a vision might also have been what her companion found in the face of the stopped Dutch clock. Yet with this it was clear that she would now show no bitterness: she had done with that, had given the last drop to those horrible hours in London. No passion even was left to her, and her forbearance only added to the force with which she represented the final vanity of everything.