know now what he feels about people like me."

Again Lady Elliston controlled herself to a momentary silence and again
her fingers sharply beat out her uncontrollable impatience. "I live in a
world, Amabel," she said at last, "where people when they use the word
'sin,' in that connection, know that it's obsolete, a mere decorative
symbol for unconventionality. In my world we don't have your cloistered
black and white view of life nor see sin where only youth and trust and
impulse were. If one takes risks, one may have to pay for them, of
course; one plays the game, if one is in the ring, and, of course, you
may be put out of the ring if you break the rules; but the rules are
those of wisdom, not of morality, and the rule that heads the list is:
Don't be found out. To imagine that the rules are anything more than
matters of social convenience is to dignify the foolish game. It is a
foolish game, Amabel, this of life: but one or two things in it are
worth having; power to direct the game; freedom to break its rules; and
love, passionate love, between a man and woman: and if one is strong
enough one can have them all."

Lady Elliston had again put her hand to her brow, shielding her eyes and
leaning her elbow on the table, and Amabel had raised her head and sat
still, gazing at her.

"You weren't strong enough," Lady Elliston went on after a little pause:
"You made frightful mistakes: the greatest, of course, was in running
away with Paul Quentin: that was foolish, and it was, if you like to
call foolishness by its obsolete name, a sin. You shouldn't have gone:
you should have stayed: you should have kept your lover--as long as you
wanted to."

Again she paused. "Do I horrify you?"

"No: you don't horrify me," Amabel replied. Her voice was gentle, almost
musing; she was absorbed in her contemplation.

"You see," said Lady Elliston, "you didn't play the game: you made a
mess of things and put the other players out. If you had stayed, and
kept your lover, you would have been, in my eyes, a less loveable but a
wiser woman. I believe in the game being kept up; I believe in the
social structure: I am one of its accredited upholders"; in the shadow
of her hand, Lady Elliston slightly smiled. "I believe in the family,
the group of shared interests, shared responsibilities, shared
opportunities it means: I don't care how many lovers a woman has if she
doesn't break up the family, if she plays the game. Marriage is a social