I lifted my arms in a helpless gesture and let them drop to my sides.

"One is not one's own master in these things."

"Then you do?"

"Yes," said I in a low voice.

Eleanor drew a long breath, turned and sat down again on the sofa.

"And she knows it?"

"I have told her so."

"Then why in the world has she run away?"

"Because you two wonderful and divinely foolish people have been too big
for each other. While you were impressed by one quality in her she was
equally impressed by another in you. She departed, burning her ships, so
as to go entirely out of my life for the simple reason, as she herself
expresses it, that she was not fit to black your boots. So," said I,
taking her left hand in mine and patting it gently, "between you two
dear, divine angel fools, I fall to the ground."

A while later, just before we parted, she said in her frank way:

"I know many people would say I've behaved with shocking
impropriety--immodestly and all that. You don't, do you? I believe half
the unhappiness in life comes from people being afraid to go straight
at things. Perhaps I've gone too straight this time--but you'll forgive
me?"

I smiled and squeezed her hand. "My dear," said I, "Lola Brandt was
right. You are God's good angel."

I went away in a chastened mood, no longer wrathful, for what could
woman do more for mortal man than what Eleanor Faversham had attempted?
She had gone to see whether she should stand against her rival, and with
a superb generosity, unprecedented in her sex, she had withdrawn. The
magnanimity of it overwhelmed me. I walked along the street exalting her
to viewless pinnacles of high-heartedness. And then, suddenly, the Devil
whispered in my ear that execrated word "eumoiriety." It poisoned the
rest of the day. It confirmed my conviction of the ironical designs of
Destiny. Destiny, not content with making me a victim of the accursed
principle in my own person, had used these two dear women as its
instruments in dealing me fresh humiliation. Where would it end? Where
could I turn to escape such an enemy? If I had been alone in green
fields instead of Sloane Square, I should have clapped my hands to my
head and prayed God not to drive me crazy. I should have cried wild vows
to the winds and shaken my fist at the sky and rolled upon the grass
and made a genteel idiot of myself. Nature would have understood. Men
do these things in time of stress, and I was in great stress. I loved
a woman