"Of having _been_ loved," she went on. "That is. Of having," she wound
up, "realised her passion. She wanted nothing more. She has had _all_
she wanted."
Lucid and always grave, she gave this out with a beautiful authority
that he could for the time meet with no words. He could only again look
at her, though with the sense in so doing that he made her more than he
intended take his silence for assent. Quite indeed as if she did so
take it she quitted the table and came to the fire. "You may think it
hideous that I should now, that I should _yet_"--she made a point of
the word--"pretend to draw conclusions. But we've not failed."
"Oh!" he only again murmured.
She was once more close to him, close as she had been the day she came
to him in Venice, the quickly returning memory of which intensified and
enriched the fact. He could practically deny in such conditions nothing
that she said, and what she said was, with it, visibly, a fruit of that
knowledge. "We've succeeded." She spoke with her eyes deep in his own.
"She won't have loved you for nothing." It made him wince, but she
insisted. "And you won't have loved _me_."