“Molly,” he said in a voice that might have come down from heaven on dove wings, “you can’t for a moment feel or think that I don’t realise and appreciate what you have been to the motherless little chap, and for life I am yours at command, as he is.  I really thought it would be a relief to you to have him taken away from you for a little while just now, and I still think it is best; but not unless you consent.  You shall have him back whenever you are ready for him, and at all times both he and I are at your service to the whole of our kingdoms.  Just think the matter over, won’t you, and decide what you want me to do?”

Something in me died for ever, I think, when he spoke to me like that.  He’s not like other men, and there aren’t any other men on earth but him!  All the rest are just nowhere.  And I’m not anything myself.  There’s no excuse for my living, and I wish I wasn’t so healthy and likely to go on doing it.  It was all over, and there was nothing left for me to live for, and before I could stop myself I buried my face in my hands.

“Billy asked me to go with him on this awful whale-hunt!” I sobbed out to comfort myself with the thought that somebody did care for me, regardless of just how I was further embarrassing and complicating myself in the affairs of the two men I had thought I owned and was now finding out that I had to give up.  I wish I had been looking at him, for I felt him start, but he said in his big friendly voice that is so much—­and never enough for me—­

“Well, why not you and Alfred come along and make it a family party, if that is what suits Bill, the boss?”

If men would just make an end of women’s hearts in a businesslike way, it would be so much kinder of them.  Why do they prefer to use dull weapons that mash the life out slowly?  Everything is at an end for me to-night, and that blow did it.  It was a horrible cruel thing for him to say to me!  I know now that I have been in love with John Moore for longer than I can tell, and that I’ll never love anybody else, and that also I have offered myself to him and have had to be refused at least twice a day for a year.  A widow can’t say she didn’t understand what she was doing, even to herself, but—­ My humiliation is complete, and the only thing that can make me ever hold up my head is to puzzle him by—­by happily marrying Alfred Bennett—­and quick.

Of course, he must suspect how I feel about him, for two people couldn’t both be so ignorant as not to see such an enormous thing as my love for him is, and I was the blind one.  But he must never, never know that I ever realised it, for he is so good that it would distress him.  I must just go on in my foolish way with him until I can get away.  I’ll tell him I’m sorry I was so indignant to-night, and say that I think it will be fine for him to take my Billy away from me with him.  I must smile at the idea of having my very soul amputated, insist that it is the only thing to do, and pack up the little soul in a cabin trunk with a smile.  Just smile, that is all!  Life demands smiles from a woman even if she must crush their perfume from her own heart; and she generally has them ready.