OLIVER. Did I? I didn't intend to.

ANABEL. Ha, ha, Oliver! Your good intentions! They are too good to bear investigation, my friend. Ah, but for your good and friendly intentions---

OLIVER. You mean my friendship with Gerald went against you?

ANABEL. Yes. And your friendship with me went against Gerald.

OLIVER. So I am the devil in the piece.

ANABEL. You see, Oliver, Gerald loved you far too well ever to love me altogether. He loved us both. But the Gerald that loved you so dearly, old, old friends as you were, and TRUSTED you, he turned a terrible face of contempt on me. You don't know, Oliver, the cold edge of Gerald's contempt for me--because he was so secure and strong in his old friendship with you. You don't know his sneering att.i.tude to me in the deepest things with you. He had a pa.s.sion for me. But he loved you.

OLIVER. Well, he doesn't any more. We went apart after you had gone. The friendship has become almost casual.

ANABEL. You see how bitterly you speak.

OLIVER. Yet you didn't hate me, Anabel.

ANABEL. No, Oliver--I was AWFULLY fond of you. I trusted you--and I trust you still. You see I knew how fond Gerald was of you. And I had to respect this feeling. So I HAD to be aware of you: and I HAD to be conscious of you: in a way, I had to love you. You understand how I mean? Not with the same fearful love with which I loved Gerald. You seemed to me warm and protecting--like a brother, you know--but a brother one LOVES.

OLIVER. And then you hated me?

ANABEL. Yes, I had to hate you.

OLIVER. And you hated Gerald?

ANABEL. Almost to madness--almost to madness.

OLIVER. Then you went away with that Norwegian. What of him?

ANABEL. What of him? Well, he's dead.

OLIVER. Ah! That's why you came back?

ANABEL. No, no. I came back because my only hope in life was in coming back. Baard was beautiful--and awful. You know how glisteningly blond he was. Oliver, have you ever watched the polar bears? He was cold as iron when it is so cold that it burns you. Coldness wasn't negative with him.

It was positive--and awful beyond expression--like the aurora borealis.

OLIVER. I wonder you ever got back.

ANABEL. Yes, so do I. I feel as if I'd fallen down a fissure in the ice.

Yet I have come back, haven't I?

OLIVER. G.o.d knows! At least, Anabel, we've gone through too much ever to start the old game again. There'll be no more sticky love between us.

ANABEL. No, I think there won't, either.

OLIVER. And what of Gerald?

ANABEL. I don't know. What do you think of him?

OLIVER. I can't think any more. I can only blindly go from day to day, now.

ANABEL. So can I. Do you think I was wrong to come back? Do you think I wrong Gerald?

OLIVER. No. I'm glad you came. But I feel I can't KNOW anything. We must just go on.

ANABEL. Sometimes I feel I ought never to have come to Gerald again--never--never--never.

OLIVER. Just left the gap?--Perhaps, if everything has to come asunder.

But I think, if ever there is to be life--hope,--then you had to come back. I always knew it. There is something eternal between you and him; and if there is to be any happiness, it depends on that. But perhaps there is to BE no happiness--for our part of the world.

ANABEL (after a pause). Yet I feel hope--don't you?

OLIVER. Yes, sometimes.

ANABEL. It seemed to me, especially that winter in Norway,--I can hardly express it,--as if any moment life might give way under one, like thin ice, and one would be more than dead. And then I knew my only hope was here--the only hope.

OLIVER. Yes, I believe it. And I believe---

(Enter MRS. BARLOW.)

MRS. BARLOW. Oh, I wanted to speak to you, Oliver.

OLIVER. Shall I come across?

MRS. BARLOW. No, not now. I believe father is coming here with Gerald.

OLIVER. Is he going to walk so far?

MRS. BARLOW. He will do it.--I suppose you know Oliver?

ANABEL. Yes, we have met before.

MRS. BARLOW (to OLIVER). You didn't mention it. Where have you met Miss Wrath? She's been about the world, I believe.

ANABEL. About the world?--no, Mrs. Barlow. If one happens to know Paris and London---

MRS. BARLOW. Paris and London! Well, I don't say you are all together an adventuress. My husband seems very pleased with you--for Winifred's sake, I suppose--and he's wrapped up in Winifred.

ANABEL. Winifred is an artist.

MRS. BARLOW. All my children have the artist in them. They get it from my family. My father went mad in Rome. My family is born with a black fate--they all inherit it.

OLIVER. I believe one is master of one's fate sometimes, Mrs. Barlow.

There are moments of pure choice.

MRS. BARLOW. Between two ways to the same end, no doubt. There's no changing the end.