He realised that he had to deal now with a more
complete and complex creature than Anne had been.

"How could it?" he asked.

"If _she_ came back--"

"Never. And if it did--"

"Ah, if it did--"

"It couldn't in this case--my case--your case--"

"Her case--" she whispered.

"Her case? She hasn't got one. She simply doesn't exist. She might come
back as much as she pleased, and still she wouldn't exist. Is _that_ what
you've been afraid of all the time?"

"I never was really afraid till now."

"What you're afraid of couldn't happen. You can put that out of your head
for ever. If I could mention you in the same sentence as that woman you
should know why I am so certain. As it is, I must ask you again to take
my word for it."

He paused.

"But, since you have raised the question--and it's interesting, too--I
knew a man once--not a 'bad' man--to whom that very thing did happen. And
it didn't mean that he'd left off caring for his wife. On the contrary,
he was still insanely fond of her."

"What did it mean, then?"

"That she'd left off showing that she cared for him. And he cared more
for her, that man, after having left her, than he did before. In its way
it was a sort of test."

"I pray heaven--" said Anne; but she was too greatly shocked by the
anecdote to shape her prayer.

Majendie, feeling that the time, the place, and her mood were propitious
for the exposition, went on.

"There's another man I know. He was very fond of Edie. He's fond of her
still. He'll come and sit for hours playing backgammon with her. And yet
all his fondness for her hasn't kept him entirely straight. But he'd have
been as straight as anybody if he could have married her."

"But what does all this prove?"

"It proves nothing," he said almost passionately, "except that these two
things, just because they're different, are not so incompatible as you
seem to think."

"Did Edie care for that man?"

"I believe so."

"Ah, don't you see? There's the difference. What made Edie a saint made
him a sinner."

"I doubt if Edie would look on it quite in that light. She thinks it was
uncommonly hard on him."

"Does she know?"

"Oh, there's no end to the things that Edie knows."

"And she loves him in spite of it?"

"Yes. I suppose there's no end to that either."

No end to her loving. That was the secret, then, of Edie's peace.

Anne meditated upon that, and when she spoke again her voice rang on its
vibrating, sub-passio