She shook her head, closing her eyes.

"Little girl!--oh, little girl!" he said softly, the old familiar phrase
finding its own way to his lips--and she trembled slightly; "was there
no other way but that? Had marriage made the world such a living hell
for you that there was no other way but _that_?"

"Phil, I helped to make it a hell."

"Yes--because I was pitiably inadequate to design anything better for
us. I didn't know how. I didn't understand. I, the architect of our
future--failed."

"It was worse than that, Phil; we"--she looked blindly at him--"we had
yet to learn what love might be. We did not know. . . . If we could have
waited--only waited!--perhaps--because there _were_ moments--" She
flushed crimson.

"I could not make you love me," he repeated; "I did not know how."

"Because you yourself had not learned how. But--at times--now looking
back to it--I think--I think we were very near to it--at moments. . . .
And then that dreadful dream closed down on us again. . . . And
then--the end."

"If you could have held out," he breathed; "if I could have helped! It
was I who failed you after all!"

For a long while they sat in silence; Mrs. Ruthven's white furs now