ess of her apathy,
she trailed across the floor.

"Ally, what is it? Why didn't you send for me?"

"It's all right. I wanted to get up. I'm coming down to supper. You
can leave off packing that old trunk. You haven't got to go."

"Who told you I was going?"

"Nobody. I knew it." She answered Gwenda's eyes. "I don't know how
I knew it, but I did. And I know why you're going and it's all rot.
You're going because you know that if you stay Steven Rowcliffe'll
marry you, and you think that if you go he'll marry me."

"Whatever put that idea into your head?"

"Nothing put it. It came. It shows how awful you must think me if you
think I'd go and do a beastly thing like that."

"Like what?"

"Why--sneaking him away from you behind your back when I know you like
him. You needn't lie about it. You _do_ like him.

"I may be awful," she went on. "In fact I know I'm awful. But I'm
decent. I couldn't do a caddish thing like that--I couldn't really.
And, if I couldn't, there's no need for you to go."

She was sitting on the trunk where Mary had sat, and when she began to
speak she had looked down at her small hands that grasped the edge
of the lid, their fingers picking nervously at the ragged flap. They
ceased and she looked up.

And in her look, a look that for the moment was divinely lucid, Gwenda
saw Ally's secret and hidden kinship with herself. She saw it as if
through some medium, once troubled and now made suddenly transparent.
It was because of that queer kinship that Ally had divined her.
However awful she was, however tragically foredoomed and driven, Ally
was decent. She knew what Gwenda was doing because it was what, if any
sustained lucidity were ever given her, she might have done herself.

But in Ally no idea but the one idea was very deeply rooted. Sustained
lucidity never had been hers. It would be easy to delude her.

"I'm going," Gwenda said, "because I want to. If I stayed I wouldn't
marry Steven Rowcliffe, and Steven Rowcliffe wouldn't marry me."

"But--I thought--I thought----"

"What did you think?"

"That there was something between you. Papa said so."

"If Papa said so you might have known there was nothing in it."

"And isn't there?"

"Of course there isn't. You can put that idea out of your head
forever."

"All the same I believe that's why you're going."

"I'm going because I can't stand this place any longer. You said I'd
be sick of it in three months."

"You're not sick of i