"Yes."
"She wished to see you, I know."
"How you say that—how timidly! Garda, at least, is not troubled by timidity."
"Perhaps you will go abroad again yourself?"
"Not to see Mrs. Lucian Spenser! Would you like to have me go?" he added.
"Yes."
"I am very much obliged to you. It's a plan, is it?—you wouldn't have spoken of her otherwise. I see; I am growing older, I'm lonely, I'm sad; perhaps I'm wicked. A 'home,' therefore, is the thing I need—you women think so much of a home—and so you've planned this. It's very ingenious. But unfortunately I don't fall in with it. Don't waste any more time talking of Garda," he said, sharply.
Margaret's head was bent.
"It isn't possible that you have thought I could care for her, Margaret—such a woman as that. Why, you're trembling" (he rose and pulled down her shielding hand), "you're relieved! You have really dreamed, then, that it might happen!"
"It makes me hate myself," he went on, a mist showing itself in his eyes—"to see your unselfishness; you have thought of this because you believe that it would be better for me, that I should be happier. And if you had succeeded, if it could really have come about, how you would have lived up to it! To the very last hour of your life you wouldn't have swerved."