"Then you no longer love her?"
"Loving is now out of the question, but I had, I thought, a great love for her."
"Had!"
"Yes. I loved Ada until she contemplated making me a partner with her in the sin of deceiving the man who was then—almost—her husband. After that I had no hesitation in resigning her. I would not remain in London—she was very lovable—I might—I think not—but I might——"
"You acted as an honorable man must have done. Danger is an unknown quantity until you meet it face to face, and in this danger you were like a swimmer that only tips the tangles and does not know the depth of the water below them. I am glad you had the courage to leave her. Let her be dismissed even from your thoughts."
"How should I dare to think of her after those London papers? The Decalogue and Christ's words concerning its seventh law still stand with me as a finality. I no longer love her. I am not even angry with her. She was just the reef on which my life went down. An hour ago I buried her."
"Your life has not gone down. It ought to be more rich and buoyant for this very experience. It will be."
"Perhaps. Yet all life's pleasant things have suffered the same change that Autumn works on the flowery braes of Spring, and I feel,
'My days are as the grass,
Swiftly my seasons pass,
And like the flower of the field I fade.'"
Jessy waited a moment or two, and then replied, "I think, Ian, you might be just and honorable to the poet. Why do you cut the verse in two? I will give you the other three lines, as you seem to have forgotten them: