"If you want to know the truth, we have not got half enough. I find Cuthbert is every bit as extravagant as I am. I wanted him to come with me to-day, but do you think I could get him away from the 'petits chevaux'? Not I! And let me tell you one can lose a fair amount of money at that game, silly as it is."
Caroline stood still; there were tears in her eyes.
"Oh, dearest!" she said, "is ... is it always to be the same? Is...."
Camilla whipped her round, and they walked sharply back towards the sands.
"You shan't cry for me," she said; "I'm a beast. I'm not worth it. You don't know how little I deserve your tears."
"Yes, I do," said Caroline; "but I can't help crying; because I love you, because you are the first person, you and the children, who have belonged to me, who have made life real, and because I want the children to have a proper mother. Not just a pretty doll dressed up every time they see her in something new. You had it in your power once to turn your back deliberately on all this worthlessness; but I won't go into that now.... Only I must speak, I must try to let you realize...." Once again her voice broke; then, with an effort, Caroline said, "Though you have lost so much, there is still so much left.... I know it will be a little bit harder for you now, but still you can do it if you like. Everybody can rise...." The words ended abruptly.
"Don't!" said Camilla, and then she added, "When I am with you I want to be as you want me to be, but when I am away I have not the strength to change, and it all seems so useless; the trying, I mean...." There was real depth in her voice as she said, "Do you think I don't know what I have lost? I have known it more and more every day. I expect I shall know it a good deal more surely before I come to the end of my life. It's only this excitement that makes me want to go on at all."
"I thought you were happy," Caroline said in a low, moved voice.
The other woman shrugged her shoulders and said nothing. Then, quite abruptly, she began speaking about Broxbourne.
"Do you know that ever so many people assured me you were going to marry him. I wouldn't believe it, and when I saw him in Dieppe yesterday I determined all at once that I would speak to him myself. I don't mind telling you, Caroline, that I have been deadly afraid of Sammy all this time; he ... I mean ... I did something to make an enemy of him, and he can be horribly nasty when he likes.... But yesterday, the moment I saw him, I was no longer afraid."