Lawrence allowed himself an uneasy movement in his chair, and he did not answer.

Prudence sat stroking the head and neck of the crow, which still remained on her knee.

"Since we are having such a very interesting conversation," she said, "pray let's continue it. There's nothing so spicy and agreeable as a tÊte-À-tÊte between husband and wife who are thoroughly disillusioned; don't you think so?"

Lawrence said nothing. He glanced about the room like one who would be glad to escape. He was weary and faint, but he would not seem weary if he could help it; and there was a weight like lead on his heart. He thought, with seeming triviality, that he had never before quite known what that phrase, "a heart as heavy as lead," meant.

"You have decided now that you never loved me," she continued. "Why need we discuss that question?" he asked.

"Oh, because it suits me to discuss it. I feel analytical this morning. Let us dissect a few feelings. My husband has just had an interview with an old flame, and now he comes and tells me he thinks he never loved me. You must believe that I shall be interested in this subject. Pray, Rodney, if I may ask, what did you feel that made it possible for you to take me to Boston that night?"

Lawrence sat gazing at Prudence as she spoke. He had a fanciful notion that his heart was like ashes as well as like lead. How could he have been so blind? He could not now imagine that he had felt what he had felt for Prudence. Some one has said that there is nothing so dead as a dead passion.

"I suppose," he said, slowly and drearily, "that I had a fancy for you. You infatuated me; it was a kind of intoxication."

"Do you eliminate passion from love?"

She put the question as if she were making an inquiry concerning a symptom of disease.

"No, but love is not all passion. It has a basis of tenderness and respect; it is not a delirium."

"From which you recover to despise yourself?"

She seemed to add this to his sentence.

Lawrence rose; he stood a moment in front of his wife, gazing down at her. He was bewildered by the tumult of his emotions, by his strange indifference to Prudence, and, perhaps more than all, by his physical weakness.

He turned towards the couch near and stretched himself out upon it. His wife rose and put a shawl over him, and he said, "Thank you," in a mechanical way. Then he asked, trying to prevent his voice from showing irritation:

"Is it really necessary for us to continue this talk?"

"Perhaps not; but if I prefer to go on, dear Rodney?"

Lawrence closed his eyes.

"Go on," he said.

"How kind of you to let me have the last word! But you see I think I'll take up the study of psychology, with you and me as object-lessons. Can't we mount a scrap of our feelings on a bit of glass and put it under that microscope of yours? Really, I didn't think I should come to look back almost with envy to that time when I nursed mamma at Carlsbad. At least I wasn't married then, and Lord Maxwell came to the place. To be sure, he had symptoms, and a man with symptoms isn't much better than a block of wood to flirt with." Prudence's voice was running on with a semblance of gaiety; and now she laughed.

"I wonder what sort of a flirter Caro finds Lord Maxwell. Of course he's stupid, for is he not a man? I heard Mrs. Yorke say yesterday that people began to talk as if Maxwell would marry Carolyn. She may be the countess in the family, after all. Then mamma can say, 'My niece, Lady Maxwell,' instead of 'My daughter, Lady Maxwell.' Of course it won't be quite so fine, but it will do. I suppose Caro will visit every cottage on his lordship's estate, and will make no end of flannel petticoats. In novels, you know, the good lady carries petticoats and strong soups to the poor, and reads to them. Can't you see Caro doing that, Rodney?"

Lawrence lay with his eyes closed. He opened them now to glance at his wife. She was looking full at him, and their mutual gaze met as two shining bits of steel might meet. It almost seemed as if one listening might have heard the clash of metal on metal.

Lawrence immediately closed his eyes again.

"Can't you see Caro doing that?" repeated Prudence, relentlessly.

"I haven't an active imagination like you," he answered, at last. "What a pity!"

Prudence, after a moment, turned to her writing again. Her husband lay there, and heard her pen going over the paper.

He began to think more calmly, and it came to him that he had not done a good thing in telling Prudence that he had never loved her. There was no need of his saying that. He would give much now if he could recall those words; but he knew he could not remove the sting of them. What a brute he had been! What a very different person he was, every way, from the person he had meant to be! He did not feel able to understand it all. He wished he could banish the memory of Carolyn's lovely, truthful face. He was sorry he had seen her. Did human beings always want the thing they could not have?

For what seemed a long time, he heard his wife's pen on the paper; then the noise grew indistinct, and Lawrence knew that he was going to sleep, and was thankful for the knowledge.

But he did not sleep long. Nothing special awakened him, however. He opened his eyes; they rested on Prudence, who had stopped writing. She was sitting with her hands folded on her lap, gazing at him. How old and hard her face appeared! She smiled immediately, smiled brilliantly and without any softness.

"I was waiting for you to waken," she said.

"Well?"

"I hadn't quite had the last word yet," she said, with a slight laugh.

Lawrence sat up.

"I was a brute to tell you I had never loved you," he exclaimed, abruptly.

"Never mind; we must always tell the truth, you know," she returned, lightly.

He said nothing. He was trying to brush the clouds away from his brain and think clearly.

"And since we must speak truth," she went on, "I was waiting to tell you I was distractedly in love with you,—it was no make-believe,—but that I was deadly tired of the whole thing in a few months. It's not quite a year yet, is it? That's why I wanted to amuse myself with Mr. Meramble, or somebody. But when you flung Meramble into the ocean you did it so well, and he seemed so insignificant, that I was almost in love with you again. But it didn't last. Now I've had the last word; I imagine we understand each other."

She rose and stretched her arms above her head. She glanced at her watch. "I'm going sailing with Mrs. Yorke and a few others. I hope you won't need anything before I come back. Don't you think you'd better try to have another nap? You look very tired. And I hope you won't forget your medicine, and all that kind of thing."

She went into the inner room, and in a few moments came back with hat on and parasol in her hand.

Lawrence was walking back and forth in the room. He paused near his wife, and laid his hand on her arm.

"I hope you won't remember the foolish things a poor half-sick fellow says," he began. "I hope, since we are to spend our lives together, we may be on friendly terms, Prudence."

Prudence was occupied in furling her parasol, and in fastening the folds. She did not raise her eyes, as she answered, "Of course we shall be friendly. You didn't think I should begin to quarrel with you, did you? I'm not quite so vulgar as that. I'm not going to mend your stockings, or warm your slippers, or that kind of thing, you know. We are like other people, that's all."

Prudence now glanced up at her companion. There was a fire in her eyes that blazed still more, as she continued: "I imagine I have a great deal of temperament, as the French say. Now, good-by. I don't know whether we shall sail down to Plymouth, or not."

She left the room. The crow walked after her to the door, made a guttural sound, then occupied himself by pulling threads from the carpet.

Lawrence leaned against a window-casing, and gazed vaguely at the bird.

"What did she mean by that?" he asked, aloud. "What is it to have a great deal of temperament? Perhaps I have it myself."

He turned towards the window, from which he could see the ocean.

"Not quite a year ago. Really, it's horrible to come to this in less than a year. There they go. How charming Yorke thinks her! See him take her parasol and carefully hold it between her and the sun. His wife is carrying her own sunshade. See Prudence look up at her cavalier and smile at him. Oh, what an egregious ass I have been. And now let me drink what I have brewed."

He turned from the window. He gave a short laugh. "Why, I am actually becoming a soliloquizer. To how much lower depths shall I sink, I wonder?"

After a short time he left the hotel, and walked out to a group of rocks that at low tide stood up bare and brown in the sunlight. Just now no one was there so he chose them as a resting-place. His tall, gaunt form, as it made its way slowly along the beach, looked out of tune with its gay surroundings.

When he had seated himself, a sail came gaily round the little promontory, and glided within a few rods of him. Some one waved a handkerchief at him; he lifted his hat mechanically, and saw that it was his wife who was saluting him. Then the craft gathered speed, and reeled away out into the great blue space.

Prudence, sitting in the bows, leaned forward as if to greet still more quickly the immensity and grandeur of the sea. She never tired of the ocean. Her whole face seemed to kindle; beautiful curves came to her lips as she sat there silently. The sensuous nature drank in, with a kind of dainty greediness, the scene before her. To love the beautiful passionately, to be moved strongly by it, and revel in it, and be drunk with it,—perhaps Prudence did not actually formulate the belief that to do this made her a refined person, somehow above the merely upright human being; but she certainly had a nebulous conviction to that effect. She had an unexpressed contempt for those people who pretended to be guided by their consciences, or by what they called religious principle. Of course it was all a matter of temperament, she said. She once remarked, with one of her light laughs, that she did not know what it was to be a pantheist, but she rather thought that she was one; she would be either that or a devout member of the Roman or Greek Church,—something which had a gorgeous ritual into which she could plunge her senses and stimulate them with sumptuous dreams, and images, and music, and perfume of incense. Yes, after all, she believed she preferred that kind of thing to being a pantheist; though, on second thoughts, perhaps pantheism included all these.