“At the same instant I heard a movement on the other side of the bed. I went around.
“My best friend was removing his hand from the curtains on the other side, and in his hand was the locket. It was his hand that I had felt.
“We stared at each other. I spoke first, and in a whisper, so that the others in the next room, who had come to watch, should not hear.
“'I came for that,' I said.
“'The locket? So did I,” he said. And then added quite simply, 'My picture is in it.'
“'You lie!' I whispered, shaken by a wind of fury. And yet I knew that perhaps he did not lie, that what he said might well be true. Perhaps that was the cause of my fury.
“His face was lined with a grief and weariness terrible to behold. To look at him you would have thought that there was nothing else in the world for him except grief. It was a great grief that made him careless of everything else.
“'It is my picture,' he said. 'She loved me.'
“'I say that you lie,' I repeated. 'She may have played with you—but she never loved any one but me—in her heart she never did!'
“'You!' And because he whispered, hissing out the words, they seemed to gain in intensity of scorn. 'You! She hated you! You who neglected her, you with your damned eternal politics, you who could never understand her—love? You who could never give her the things a woman needs and must have—the warmth—the color—the romance—the poetry of life! You!—with your cold-blooded humanitarianism! I tell you, she loved me! Why should I hesitate to avow it to you? It is the sweetest thing on earth to me, that she loved me! She turned from you to me because——'