"If I could believe that," said Diana, tensely, "nothing else would matter."
"Yet, believing it, how can it be right for him to marry some one else?"
Diana, with her chin propped between her hands, stared with wide eyes into space. "It isn't right—but she loves him, Sophie."
"Yet she's not the one woman—oh, what a muddle, Diana."
"What a muddle," and for a time they sat in silence.
Then Sophie said, "Perhaps it's because I was so happy in my marriage—that I can see so clearly. I've worked it out this way, dearest, dear—that in all the world there's just one woman for one man. If he meets and marries her, no matter how hard their life may be, they will be drawn together, not separated, by the hardness; no matter how the world may use them, they will cling together against the world. But when a man marries the wrong woman, he goes through life a half-man, crippled in mind and spirit, because of his mistake. Sometimes the man finds the one woman in a second marriage; sometimes he finds her too late; sometimes he is too blind to know that she is the one woman, and he lets her go, to discover afterward that no other can fill his life. That's the pity of it. If Anthony marries Bettina, she will know some day—that she is—the wrong woman——"
Diana rose and moved restlessly about the room. "But she's so slim and white and young—and no man can resist that sort of thing long. She has youth to give him, Sophie, and I, why, soon I'll be middle-aged."
"You—oh, Diana——"
Diana's laugh had a sob in it. "Well, I shall be."
"You'll never be anything but lovely—when you're an old lady you'll be stately and distinguished, and your eyes will shine like stars, and men will still fall in love with you——"