"It's queer, Nancy," said Barney, "that--barring Palgrave, who doesn't count--you and Roger are the only two people she has left to stick up for her. Roger's just been saying all that to me, you know. The two she tried to crab whenever she got a chance. Well, say it's my fault, then. Say that I've been faithless to my wife and fallen in love with another woman. The fact is there, and you've said it now yourself. I don't love her any longer. I shall never love her again. And I love you. I love you, Nancy, and it's you I ought to have married; would have married, I believe, if I hadn't been a blinded fool. I love you, and I can say it now because this may be the end of everything. Don't let her spoil this, too. Nancy darling, look at me. Can't you consent to forget Adrienne for this one time, when we may never see each other again?"
"I can't forget her! I can't forget her!" Nancy sobbed. "I mustn't. She's miserable. She hasn't stopped loving you. And she's your wife."
There was a silence and in it Oldmeadow heard Barney's car draw up at the gate. He took out his watch. There were only a few more moments left them. Not turning to them he said. "It does her no good, you know, Nancy dear."
"No. It does her no good," Barney repeated. "But forgive me. I was cruel. I don't hate her. I'm sorry for her. It's simply that we ought never to have married. Forget it, Nancy, and forget her. Don't let it be, then, that I love you and don't love my wife. Let it be in the old way. As if she'd never come. As if I'd come to say good-bye to my cousin; to my dearest friend on earth. Look at me. Give me your hands. It's your face I want to take with me."
"Five minutes, Barney," Oldmeadow whispered, as he went past them. Nancy had given him her hands; she had lifted her face to his, and Barney's arms had closed around her.
Mrs. Averil was in the hall. "Give them another moment," he said. "I'm going outside."
Tears were in his own eyes. He stepped out on to the flagged path of the little plot in front of the house where strips of turf and rose-beds ran between the house and the high wall. Between the clipped holly-trees at the gate he saw Barney's car, and its lights, the wall between, cast a deep shadow over the garden.