"I--I don't understand," stammered Wantele.
"There is no necessity for you to understand. In fact I hope that, after to-night, you will dismiss the whole of this conversation from your mind. But I repeat--the choice is open to you."
And he added, musingly, "I think, Dick, that with the others out of the way you could make Jane happy--in time." But there was doubt--painful, deliberating doubt, in his tone.
"I don't agree," he said shortly. "You see, Richard, Jane"--he moistened his lips--"Jane's never loved me. She loves Lingard. And so, if God gave me the choice, I would give her to Lingard."
"You think well of the man?" Maule spoke lightly, and as if he himself had no reason to dissent from any word commending the soldier.
"You mustn't ask me to judge Lingard"--the words were difficult to utter, and he brought them out with difficulty. "I've been there, you see. I know what the poor devil's going through. I loved you, Richard--but that didn't save me. Lingard loved Jane, I believe he still loves her, and--and I should take him to be a man jealous of his honour--but neither his love nor his honour has saved him."
Wantele began walking up and down the room with long nervous strides. Then he stopped short--"What is it you mean to do, Richard?" he asked.
Richard Maule hesitated. He knew very well what he now meant to do, but he did not intend that his cousin should have any inkling, either now or hereafter, of his decision. And Dick, as he knew well, was not easily deceived. Still, he put his mind, the mind which was in some ways clearer, harder, than it had been before his illness, to the task.
"There are three courses open to me," he said slowly. "The one is to allow matters to remain as they are, _in statu quo_; the second is to do what Jane Oglander suggests--allow my wife to bring a suit for the dissolution of our marriage, and to allow it to go undefended--it is that which I should have done, Dick, had your answer been other than it was."
"And the third course?" Wantele was looking at his cousin fixedly.
"The third course, which I may probably adopt, will be for me to begin proceedings for divorce. I take it that Lingard knows nothing of the real woman? I mean, he looks at Athena as she looks at herself?"