again. [She gathers up the stalks of the flowers from the
tray, and, kneeling, crams them into the stove.] However, this is an
old story. I'm thirty-three now.

GERTRUDE. [Hesitatingly.] You and Mr. Cleeve--?

AGNES. We've known each other since last November--no longer. Six
years of my life unaccounted for, eh? Well, for a couple of years or so
I was lecturing.

GERTRUDE. Lecturing?

AGNES. Ah, I'd become an out-and-out child of my father by that time--
spouting, perhaps you'd call it, standing on the identical little
platforms he used to speak from, lashing abuses with my tongue as he
had done. Oh, and I was fond, too, of warning women.

GERTRUDE. Against what?

AGNES. Falling into the pit.

GERTRUDE. Marriage?

AGNES. The chocked-up, seething pit--until I found my bones almost
through my skin and my voice too weak to travel across a room.

GERTRUDE. From what cause?

AGNES. Starvation, my dear. So, after lying in a hospital for a month
or two, I took up nursing for a living. Last November I was sent for by
Dr. Bickerstaff to go through to Rome to look after a young man who'd
broken down there, and who declined to send for his friends. My patient
was Mr. Cleeve--[taking up the tray]--and that's where his fortunes
join mine. [She crosses the room, and puts the tray upon the cabinet.]

GERTRUDE. And yet, judging from what that girl said yesterday, Mr.
Cleeve married quite recently?

AGNES. Less than three years ago. Men don't suffer as patiently as
women. In many respects his marriage story is my own, reversed--the
man in place of the woman. I endured my hell, though; he broke the
gates of his.

GERTRUDE. I have often seen Mr. Cleeve's name in the papers. His future
promised to be brilliant, didn't it?

AGNES. [Tidying the table, folding the newspapers, &c.] There's a great
career for him still.

GERTRUDE. In Parliament--now?

AGNES. No, he abandons that, and devotes himself to writing. We shall
write much together, urging our views on this subject of Marriage. We
shall have to be poor, I expect, but we shall be content.

GERTRUDE. Content!

AGNES. Quite content. Don't judge us by my one piece of cowardly folly
in keeping the truth from you, Mrs. Thorpe, Indeed, it's our great plan
to live the life we have mapped out for ourselves, fearlessly, openly;
faithful to each other, helpful to each other, so long as we remain
together.

GERTRUDE. But tell me--you don't know how I--how I have liked you!