He raised his eyes.

“You speak only of the unhappy ones,” she said; “but there were moments—­”

“Yes; I know it.  And so I ask you, why?”

“Phil, I don’t know.  There was that last bitter quarrel—­the night you left for Leyte after the dance. . . .  I—­it all grew suddenly intolerable. You seemed so horribly unreal—­everything seemed unreal in that ghastly city—­you, I, our marriage of crazy impulse—­the people, the sunlight, the deathly odours, the torturing, endless creak of the punkha. . . .  It was not a question of—­of love, of anger, of hate.  I tell you I was stunned—­I had no emotions concerning you or myself—­after that last scene—­only a stupefied, blind necessity to get away; a groping instinct to move toward home—­to make my way home and be rid for ever of the dream that drugged me! . . .  And then—­and then—­”

“He came,” said Selwyn very quietly.  “Go on.”

But she had nothing more to say.

“Alixe!”

She shook her head, closing her eyes.

“Little girl!—­oh, little girl!” he said softly, the old familiar phrase finding its own way to his lips—­and she trembled slightly; “was there no other way but that?  Had marriage made the world such a living hell for you that there was no other way but that?”

“Phil, I helped to make it a hell.”

“Yes—­because I was pitiably inadequate to design anything better for us.  I didn’t know how.  I didn’t understand.  I, the architect of our future—­failed.”

“It was worse than that, Phil; we”—­she looked blindly at him—­“we had yet to learn what love might be.  We did not know. . . .  If we could have waited—­only waited!—­perhaps—­because there were moments—­” She flushed crimson.

“I could not make you love me,” he repeated; “I did not know how.”

“Because you yourself had not learned how.  But—­at times—­now looking back to it—­I think—­I think we were very near to it—­at moments. . . .  And then that dreadful dream closed down on us again. . . .  And then—­the end.”

“If you could have held out,” he breathed; “if I could have helped!  It was I who failed you after all!”

For a long while they sat in silence; Mrs. Ruthven’s white furs now covered her face.  At last the carriage stopped.

As he sprang to the curb he became aware of another vehicle standing in front of the house—­a cab—­from which Mrs. Ruthven’s maid descended.

“What is she doing here?” he asked, turning in astonishment to Mrs. Ruthven.

“Phil,” she said in a low voice, “I knew you had taken this place.  Gerald told me.  Forgive me—­but when I saw you under the awning it came to me in a flash what to do.  And I’ve done it. . . .  Are you sorry?”

“No. . . .  Did Gerald tell you that I had taken this place?”

“Yes; I asked him.”

Selwyn looked at her gravely; and she looked him very steadily in the eyes.