She very much feared that if she stayed with Maximus, this awful taint – this terribly wrong act – would, day by day, year by year, wear at her until she was no more than a ghost of her former self. She saw need when she looked into his eyes, but was there any love as well? Had she discarded Penelope’s friendship for a man who didn’t, in the end, truly care for her? For she loved him, she realized now, in this brightly lit garden, of all places, with his future wife, her , by her side. She loved Maximus totally and completely, with all of her bitter, broken heart, and she did not know if it was enough for the two of them.