At this Archibald's sense of what was fitting asserted itself. "Come, come," he said, "I regret profoundly that I did not frankly avow those two sermons to be Mark's. I do not expect you to forgive me in a minute, but you are generous, sensible, and my wife. We must take up our lives where we left them less than a week ago."
"That is impossible," said Betty.
She felt a great pity for him. The blow must fall with hideous violence, shattering the man's just pride in what he had accomplished. His extraordinary success seemed of a sudden to be transformed into an immense bubble about to be pricked by a word.
And when the word was spoken, when he knew everything, Betty saw what Mark had seen upon the night that the baby was born—the collapse of a personality. The big man who was to fill Lord Vauxhall's Basilica dwindled into a boy with the puzzled, wondering eyes of youth confronted for the first time with what it cannot understand. Betty felt old enough to be his mother, when he stammered out: "You—you have done this thing?"
"I might have done it," she answered gently.
He broke down.
"I have lost my brother and my wife," he groaned. "my brother and my wife."
Instantly Betty realised what Mark had always known—the weakness of the colossus. And this knowledge that she was the stronger took the chill from her heart, restoring magically her moral circulation. Looking at him, she wondered how she could have blinded herself to his true proportions. She had deemed him a Titan!
"What are you going to do?" he asked presently.
"That is for you to say. If you choose to put me from you——"