ly, utterly by my own fault. I've tried, or fancied that I've
tried. I've done what I've thought was my best--Things have happened
now, at last, that have made it impossible--I can't go on any longer."

She spoke as though she were, very urgently, endeavouring to deliver a
fair honest statement. There was in her voice a note that showed that
life had truly, of late, been very hard for her--

"I married, in the beginning, for a wrong reason. I knew then that I
didn't love my husband. I married because I wanted to escape. I had
always hated my grandmother and she had always hated me--you knew that,
Miss Rand; everyone who had anything to do with us knew it. She had done
more than hate me, she had made me frightened--frightened of life and
people. Someone came along who was kind and easy and comfortable, and
everyone said it would be a good thing, and so I, not because I loved
him, but because I wanted to escape from my grandmother, married him.
Because I had to silence everything that was honest in me I'm paying
now."

"It was all quite natural," Lizzie said. "Most women would have done the
same."

"It was horrible from the beginning; I found that I had not escaped from
my grandmother at all. She had arranged the marriage and now was
always, and in some curious way, influencing it.

"I soon saw what I had done--that I had been false to myself and
therefore false to everything else. My husband was in love with me--He
was very patient and good to me, but I found that everything that I did
or thought or said in connection with my husband was false. What made it
so hard was that I was, and I am, very fond of him. My training--the
training of all our family had always been--to learn how to be sham, so
that one's real self never appeared all one's life. It ought to have
been easy enough--but I've never been like one of my family--I'd always
been different.

"I had determined that this year I would do my duty to Roddy--But it's
harder than any determination can govern. It's bad for Roddy, it's
deadly for me ... at last things have happened that have made it
impossible for me--I've made up my mind this morning. I must leave
Roddy, let him divorce me, give him a better chance with someone else."

She spoke with the desperate immediate determination of youth, staring
in front of her, her hands clenched. Like flame at Lizzie's heart leapt
this knowledge.

"She and Breton are going--only you can stop them--she and Breton."