yrinth? I
thought it so straight up and down--like Fifth Avenue. And with all
the cross streets numbered!" She seemed to guess his faint disapproval
of this, and added, with the rare smile that enchanted her whole face:
"If you knew how I like it for just THAT--the straight-up-and-downness,
and the big honest labels on everything!"

He saw his chance. "Everything may be labelled--but everybody is not."

"Perhaps. I may simplify too much--but you'll warn me if I do." She
turned from the fire to look at him. "There are only two people here
who make me feel as if they understood what I mean and could explain
things to me: you and Mr. Beaufort."

Archer winced at the joining of the names, and then, with a quick
readjustment, understood, sympathised and pitied. So close to the
powers of evil she must have lived that she still breathed more freely
in their air. But since she felt that he understood her also, his
business would be to make her see Beaufort as he really was, with all
he represented--and abhor it.

He answered gently: "I understand. But just at first don't let go of
your old friends' hands: I mean the older women, your Granny Mingott,
Mrs. Welland, Mrs. van der Luyden. They like and admire you--they want
to help you."

She shook her head and sighed. "Oh, I know--I know! But on condition
that they don't hear anything unpleasant. Aunt Welland put it in those
very words when I tried.... Does no one want to know the truth here,
Mr. Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these kind people
who only ask one to pretend!" She lifted her hands to her face, and he
saw her thin shoulders shaken by a sob.

"Madame Olenska!--Oh, don't, Ellen," he cried, starting up and bending
over her. He drew down one of her hands, clasping and chafing it like
a child's while he murmured reassuring words; but in a moment she freed
herself, and looked up at him with wet lashes.

"Does no one cry here, either? I suppose there's no need to, in
heaven," she said, straightening her loosened braids with a laugh, and
bending over the tea-kettle. It was burnt into his consciousness that
he had called her "Ellen"--called her so twice; and that she had not
noticed it. Far down the inverted telescope he saw the faint white
figure of May Welland--in New York.

Suddenly Nastasia put her head in to say something in her rich Italian.

Madame Olenska, again with a hand at her hair, uttered an exclamation
of assent--a