that I wished to tell you," went on Rainham faintly,
"that she might know some day, that there might be just one person
who could give her the truth in its season. Yes! I wanted her to be
always in ignorance of what she had made of her life, of the kind of
man she has married. She was such a child; it seemed too pitiful. It
was for that I did it, damned myself in her eyes, to give her a
little longer--a sort of respite. Very likely I made a mistake!
Those things can't be concealed for ever, and the longer the
illusion lasts, the more bitter the awakening. Only if it might
serve her later, in her darkest hour, as a sort of after-thought, it
won't have been quite vain. That is how I see it now: I want her to
know immensely--to know that she has always been unspeakably dear to
me. Ah, don't mistake me! It's not for myself, it's not yet; I shall
have done with life, done with love, by that time. When one is as
tired as I am, death seems very good; only it hasn't those things.
Nothing can make any difference to me; I am thinking of her, that
some day or other it will be for her benefit to understand, to
remember----"

"To remember?"

"Yes, to remember," repeated Rainham quietly, "that her unhappiness
has its compensation; if she has been bitterly wronged, she has also
been fervently loved."

The other said nothing for a long time, simply considered the
situation which Rainham's words, and still more even than anything
that he had said, the things that he had not said, had strikingly
revealed to him, leaving him, at the last, in a state of mingled
emotions over which, perhaps, awe predominated.

At last he remarked abruptly:

"It _is_ you who are fortunate; you are so nearly done with it all;
you've such a long rest before you." Then he added with a new
solemnity: "You may trust me, Rainham. When it is seasonable, Mrs.
Lightmark shall know the truth. Perhaps she will come to me for it--
Heaven knows!--stranger things have happened. You have my hand upon
it; I think you are right."

"Right? You mean that it wasn't a mistake, a _betise_?"

"_Felix culpa_! If it was a mistake it was a very fine one."

"Ah! I don't regret it," said Rainham, "only----"

"Only it was a mistake to suppose that life was to be arranged. That
was all I meant. Yes; I don't believe in much, but I believe in
necessity. You can't get over it yourself, and you can't--no, not
for all your goodwill, your generosity--get over it for another.
Ther