"I have. You have not."
"No?" somewhat indifferently returned Selina, her attention partly given to her lace again, for she was never serious long together. "How do you make that out?"
"You have your husband still. Poverty with him, with one we love, must carry little sting with it. But for me—my whole life is one of never-ending loneliness, without a future, without hope. Do you know what fanciful thought came to me the other night?" she went on, after a pause. "I have all sorts of fanciful ideas when I sit alone in the twilight. I thought that life might be so much happier if God gave us a chance once of beginning it all over again from the first. Just once, when we found out what dreadful mistakes we had been making."
"And we should make the same again, though we began it fifty times over, Adela. Unless we could carry back with us our dearly-bought experience."
Adela sighed. "Yes, I suppose so. God would have so ordered it had it been well for us. He knows best. But there are some women who seem never to make mistakes, who go on their way smoothly and happily."
"Placing themselves under God's guidance, I imagine," returned Selina. "That's what my mother says to me, when she lectures me on the past."
Adela's eyes filled with tears. "Yes, yes," she murmured, meekly, recalling that it was what she had been striving to do for some little time now—to hold on her way, under submission to God.
The conversation turned into other channels, and by-and-by, when Adela was rested, she rose to leave. Selina accompanied her into the hall.
"Won't you just say 'How d'you do' to my husband?" she cried, opening the door of their common sitting-room. "He is here."
Adela made no objection, and followed Selina. Oscar was standing in the bay window, facing the door. And some one else, towering nearly a head above him, was standing at his side.