little risk; but it's nothing compared with the one you
want to take now. That's what you've got to face!"

She could say no more. When she stopped speaking Mrs. Payne knew that
the girl's eyes were fixed on her eagerly, desperately, trying to search
into her mind. The older woman stood there still and bewildered by the
choice that had been presented to her. It was the most awful moment in
her emotional life. Her mind was a battlefield on which her love, her
sense of right, her acquired conventions, her religion, and her hungry
maternal passion were pitted against one formidable dread. She wanted to
shield Arthur against harm: from a social disaster no less than from what
she considered a mortal sin; and, above all, after these years of patient
suffering, she wanted him for herself. It was neither religion nor
morality that drove her to her final decision, but a thing far stronger:
her passionate instinct to possess the son of her body. Even if she were
to lose him, to rescue no more than the changeling that she had always
known, she could not bring herself to share him with any other woman on
earth. He was hers and hers alone. She did not know if she were right.
She did not care if she were wrong. The decision formed itself
inexorably in her mind. She could only obey it. Gabrielle, watching her
narrowly, saw a sudden peace descend upon her agonised face. Mrs. Payne
gave a long shuddering sigh. Then she spoke, dully, mechanically:

"The train goes at seven-fifty. I will order the carriage. I will write
to Dr. Considine in the morning."

Gabrielle clutched at her breast. "You can't realise what you're doing!
It's too great a risk. Think of it again ... I beg you!"

"No," said Mrs. Payne slowly. "I've made up my mind. We must invent
some plausible excuse. Illness will do ... anything. And you must help
me, if only for your own sake."

Desperate tears came into Gabrielle's eyes.

"For your own sake," Mrs. Payne repeated. "You've realised, I know, that
if you go on with this unfortunate love-affair you must ruin not only
your own happiness and your husband's, but Arthur's as well. If you love
him at all you can't drag him into social ruin. Well, I've made my
decision. If anything disastrous happens my blood's on my own head. We
must make the best of a bad job. Don't think I'm not sorry for you, my
dear."

This final tenderness was too much for Gabrielle. She broke down,
sobbing so trag