Gertrude.  It changed you?

Agnes.  Oh, yes, it changed me.

Gertrude.  You spoke of yourself just now as a widow.  He’s dead?

Agnes.  He died on our wedding day—­the eighth anniversary.

Gertrude.  You were free then—­free to begin again.

Agnes.  Eh? [Looking at Gertrude.] Yes; but you don’t begin to believe all over again. [She gathers up the stalks of the flowers from the tray, and, kneeling, crams them into the stove.] However, this is an old story.  I’m thirty-three now.

Gertrude. [Hesitatingly.] You and Mr. Cleeve—?

Agnes.  We’ve known each other since last November—­no longer.  Six years of my life unaccounted for, eh?  Well, for a couple of years or so I was lecturing.

Gertrude.  Lecturing?

Agnes.  Ah, I’d become an out-and-out child of my father by that time—­ spouting, perhaps you’d call it, standing on the identical little platforms he used to speak from, lashing abuses with my tongue as he had done.  Oh, and I was fond, too, of warning women.

Gertrude.  Against what?

Agnes.  Falling into the pit.

Gertrude.  Marriage?

Agnes.  The chocked-up, seething pit—­until I found my bones almost through my skin and my voice too weak to travel across a room.

Gertrude.  From what cause?

Agnes.  Starvation, my dear.  So, after lying in a hospital for a month or two, I took up nursing for a living.  Last November I was sent for by Dr. Bickerstaff to go through to Rome to look after a young man who’d broken down there, and who declined to send for his friends.  My patient was Mr. Cleeve—­[taking up the tray]—­and that’s where his fortunes join mine. [She crosses the room, and puts the tray upon the cabinet.]

Gertrude.  And yet, judging from what that girl said yesterday, Mr.
Cleeve married quite recently?

Agnes.  Less than three years ago.  Men don’t suffer as patiently as women.  In many respects his marriage story is my own, reversed—­the man in place of the woman.  I endured my hell, though; he broke the gates of his.

Gertrude.  I have often seen Mr. Cleeve’s name in the papers.  His future promised to be brilliant, didn’t it?

Agnes. [Tidying the table, folding the newspapers, &c.] There’s a great career for him still.

Gertrude.  In Parliament—­now?

Agnes.  No, he abandons that, and devotes himself to writing.  We shall write much together, urging our views on this subject of Marriage.  We shall have to be poor, I expect, but we shall be content.

Gertrude.  Content!

Agnes.  Quite content.  Don’t judge us by my one piece of cowardly folly in keeping the truth from you, Mrs. Thorpe, Indeed, it’s our great plan to live the life we have mapped out for ourselves, fearlessly, openly; faithful to each other, helpful to each other, so long as we remain together.