ave one or
no, you've got to reckon with me now----"

"And _you've_ got to reckon," Rachel answered, with some of Lizzie's own
fierceness, "with a power that's beyond your power or mine or anyone's.
Don't you imagine that we, all of us, haven't tried hard enough. Why!
all these last two years we've done nothing but try. Now it's simply
stronger than we are. If Roddy," she went on, speaking now more slowly,
"hadn't forced it.... If he'd not been impatient--but now--after what's
just happened, it's right--it isn't fair to him, to myself, to any of
us, that things should go on as they are----"

"I'm thinking," Lizzie answered quietly, "simply of Francis Breton."

"Well! isn't it fairer too for him? He's been living, as we have, all
this time, a life that's denying all his own _real_ self. Anything's
better than being false to that--life may be hard for us if we go away
together, but at any rate it will be honest----"

"Ah! that just shows how young you are! Don't I know that pursuit of
truth and honesty as well as you? Don't I know that when life's
beginning for us, the one thing that seems to matter is exposing
ourselves, showing ourselves to the world just as we are! At first it
seems such an easy thing--Just round that corner the moment's coming
when the real person in us is going to stand up and proclaim itself just
as it is, fine and splendid? but always something just comes in the way
and stops it--the years go on and we're further off from truth than
ever.

"You think that if you go off with Francis Breton now, you'll, both
of you, be leading, suddenly, honest brave lives before the world.
I tell you it isn't so. Things will be just as crooked, just as
shadowed--issues just as confused--it will be worse than it was."

"But you don't know----"

"I know Francis Breton. Don't you know too the kind of man that he is?
Don't you know that he's as weak as a man can be, weaker than any woman
ever _could_ be? He's the kind of man who must have society to bolster
him up. If the men of his world are supporting him then he's as good as
gold, as fine as you like. Let them leave him and down he goes. All his
life the world's been down on him and that's why he's been down. Lately
he's been quiet--he's been winning his place back. Soon, if he's
patient, they'll all come round him again. But let him go off with you
and he's done, finished--absolutely, utterly. 'Ah!' everyone will say,
'that's what we expected. That's what we