."

"Should I?"

"If you love her, you must."

"How could it be repaired?"

"By her marriage with--Vernon."

Anthony's strong voice quivered before he pronounced the last word, and
his eyes were alight with fervent anxiety. He was looking at Sergius
like a man on the watch for a tremendous outbreak of emotion. The
champagne he had drunk--a new experience for him since he had taken
orders--put a sort of wild finishing touch to the intensity of the
feelings, under the impulse of which he had forced himself upon Sergius
to-night. He supposed that his inward excitement must be more than
matched by the so different inward excitement of his friend. But he--who
thought he understood!--had no true conception of the region of cold,
frosty fury in which Sergius was living, like a being apart from all
other men, ostracised by the immensity and peculiarity of his own power
of emotion. Therefore he was astonished when Sergius, with undiminished
quietude, replied:

"Oh, with Vernon, that charming man of fashion, whose very soul, they
say, always wears lavender gloves? You think that would be a good
thing?"

"Good! I don't say that. I say--as the world is now--the only thing. He
is the author of her fall. He should be her husband."

"And I?"

Anthony stretched out his hand to grasp his friend's hand, but Sergius
suddenly took up his champagne glass, and avoided the demonstration of
sympathy.

"You can be nothing to her now, Serge," Anthony said, and his voice
quivered with sympathy.

"You think so? I might be."

"What?"

"Oh, not her husband, not her lover, not her friend."

"What then?"

Sergius avoided answering.

"You would have her settle down with Vernon in Phillimore Place?" he
said. "Play the wife to his noble husband? Well, I know there's been
some idea of that, as I told you yesterday."

The clock chimed ten. Although Sergius seemed so calm, so
self-possessed, Anthony observed that now he paid no heed to the little,
devilish note of time. This new subject of conversation had been
Anthony's weapon. Desperately he had used it, and not, it seemed,
altogether in vain.

"Yes; as you told me yesterday."

"And it seems good to you?"

"It seems to me the only thing possible now."

"There are generally more possibilities than one in any given event, I
fancy."

Again Anthony was surprised at the words of Sergius, who seemed to grow
calmer as he grew more excited, who seemed, to-night, strangely
powerfu