"Yes--it's odd, isn't it? I'm not the kind of
woman, am I, ever to care for a man, or to have a man care for me?--To
have any feeling or desire or affection. But it is not so strange as it
may seem--I love him every bit as well as you do--I've cared more
patiently perhaps, more unselfishly even. But there it is ... it gives
me the right."

Nothing more surprising than that on this special circumstance Rachel
had never reckoned. Feeling it now, blazing there before her, the way
that she was to deal with it was beyond her experience. In an instant
Lizzie Rand was, to her, a new creature. Always she had seen Lizzie
patiently, with method, with discipline, putting things in order--that
was her world and dominion. Lizzie had appeared, to Rachel, to stand for
all the things that she herself was not. Rachel had often envied that
absence of emotion, that security from impulse and passion, and it was
upon that very security that Rachel had wished to depend. It was that
that had driven her to seek Lizzie's friendship. She herself so unsure,
so caught and destroyed by powers too potent for her resistance, had
looked with wonder and desire upon Lizzie's safety--

Now Lizzie Rand was no longer Lizzie Rand. She was of Rachel's number,
she might, as easily as Rachel, be swept, whirled away,--after death and
destruction.

But there was more than that. There was the realization that Lizzie must
hate her, that Lizzie was the last person in the world to whom she
should have given her confidence, that Lizzie would fight now to the
last breath in her body to keep Francis Breton from her.

During a long silence they sat facing one another--the little room was
now nearly dark and it was only by the faint pale shadow from the sky
beyond the window that they could catch, each from each, their
consciousness of their new relationship.

It was during that silence that Lizzie was again aware that her ears
were straining to catch some sound....

"I didn't know," Rachel said at last very softly; "it must seem brutal
to you now that I should have told you all this. I wouldn't of course
have spoken."

"Ah! you needn't mind," Lizzie said grimly. "He's never seen anything of
it. You must never give him any reason to suspect--I trust you for that.
No one in this world knows but you, and you should never have known if
it had not been that I _had_ to prove my right to interfere. Perhaps
even now, you don't see that I _have_ a right, but whether I h