nk of him?

OLIVER. I can't think any more. I can only blindly go from day to day,
now.

ANABEL. So can I. Do you think I was wrong to come back? Do you think I
wrong Gerald?

OLIVER. No. I'm glad you came. But I feel I can't KNOW anything. We must
just go on.

ANABEL. Sometimes I feel I ought never to have come to Gerald
again--never--never--never.

OLIVER. Just left the gap?--Perhaps, if everything has to come asunder.
But I think, if ever there is to be life--hope,--then you had to come
back. I always knew it. There is something eternal between you and him;
and if there is to be any happiness, it depends on that. But perhaps
there is to BE no happiness--for our part of the world.

ANABEL (after a pause). Yet I feel hope--don't you?

OLIVER. Yes, sometimes.

ANABEL. It seemed to me, especially that winter in Norway,--I can hardly
express it,--as if any moment life might give way under one, like thin
ice, and one would be more than dead. And then I knew my only hope was
here--the only hope.

OLIVER. Yes, I believe it. And I believe---

(Enter MRS. BARLOW.)

MRS. BARLOW. Oh, I wanted to speak to you, Oliver.

OLIVER. Shall I come across?

MRS. BARLOW. No, not now. I believe father is coming here with Gerald.

OLIVER. Is he going to walk so far?

MRS. BARLOW. He will do it.--I suppose you know Oliver?

ANABEL. Yes, we have met before.

MRS. BARLOW (to OLIVER). You didn't mention it. Where have you met Miss
Wrath? She's been about the world, I believe.

ANABEL. About the world?--no, Mrs. Barlow. If one happens to know Paris
and London---

MRS. BARLOW. Paris and London! Well, I don't say you are all together
an adventuress. My husband seems very pleased with you--for Winifred's
sake, I suppose--and he's wrapped up in Winifred.

ANABEL. Winifred is an artist.

MRS. BARLOW. All my children have the artist in them. They get it from
my family. My father went mad in Rome. My family is born with a black
fate--they all inherit it.

OLIVER. I believe one is master of one's fate sometimes, Mrs. Barlow.
There are moments of pure choice.

MRS. BARLOW. Between two ways to the same end, no doubt. There's no
changing the end.

OLIVER. I think there is.

MRS. BARLOW. Yes, you have a _parvenu's_ presumptuousness somewhere
about you.

OLIVER. Well, better than a blue-blooded fatalism.

MRS. BARLOW. The fate is in the blood: you can't change the blood.

(Enter WINIFRED.)

WINIFRED. Oh, thank