corner of her consciousness, and had done
her best to make it stay there. She discovered how sore
its fret had been only with the relief she felt when she
simplified it at a stroke that afternoon on which everything
came to an end between her and Elfrida. Since the burden
of obligation their relation imposed had been removed
Janet had analyzed her friendship, and had found it
wanting in many ways to which she had been wilfully blind
before. The criticism she had always silenced came forward
and spoke boldly; and she recognized the impossibility
of a whole-hearted intimacy where a need for enforced
dumbness existed. All the girl's charm she acknowledged
with a heart wrung by the thought that it was no longer
for her. She dwelt separately and long upon Elfrida's
keen sense of justice, her impulsive generosity, her
refined consideration for other people, the delicacy of
some of her personal instincts, her absolute sincerity
toward herself and the world, her passionate exaltation
of what was to her the ideal in art. Janet exacted from
herself the last jot of justice toward Elfrida in all
these things; and then she listened, as she had not done
before, to the voice that spoke to her from the very
depths of her being, it seemed, and said, "Nevertheless,
_no!_" She only half comprehended, and the words brought
her a sadness that would be long, she knew, in leaving
her; but she listened and agreed.

And now it seemed to her that she must ignore it again,
that the wise, the necessary, the expedient thing to do
was to go to Elfrida and re-establish, if she could, the
old relation, cost what it might. She must take up her
burden of obligation again in order that it might be
mutual. Then she would have the right to beg Elfrida to
stop playing fast and loose with her father, to act
decisively. If Elfrida only knew, only realized, the
difference it made, and how little right she had to
control, at her whim, the happiness of any human being
--and Janet brought a strong hand to bear upon her
indignation, for she had resolved to go; and to go that
night.

Lawrence-Cardiff bade his daughter an early, good-night
after their unusually pleasant dinner. "Do you think
you can do it?" he asked her before he went Janet started
at the question, for they had not mentioned Elfrida again,
even remotely.

"I think I can, daddy," she answered him gravely, and
they separated. She looked at her watch; by half-past
nine she could be in Essex