his love for you. Let me make a clean breast of it, show you how
ignorant he was of my plans for meeting him. He never was more
surprised in his life."

"I didn't mean to resent it, but there are some things we never need
telling, things which are better left unsaid. Michael needs no telling
that you never stole the jewels, for instance, that you never tried to
reach the hills."

"Stole the jewels! No, I never stole them. You thought that?" Horror
was in Millicent's voice. "You thought I stole them for my personal
use? To wear them?"

"It would not have been so cruel as to steal my lover, would it?"

"It would have been less difficult."

"You tried--oh, how you tried to steal him! How could--you?" A
revulsion of feeling hardened Margaret. Her eyes showed it. She was
visualizing Millicent in all her former beauty. Even without beauty,
she knew how strongly her vitality would appeal to men. Despondent, in
her drooping black shawls, Millicent was keenly alive still. Margaret
had always felt her vitality; she knew that men felt it. It stirred
them to conquest; it invited contest.

Millicent answered her truthfully. "Because I am bad, not good, and I
loved him with the only kind of love I know. It swept aside all
scruples. You can't judge--try to believe that--you can't begin to
judge. I lived for conquest and men's admiration, and now I have lost
both."

Margaret felt humbled to the dust. Her judgment had been so crude, so
narrow. She realized that the woman before her left her far behind in
the matter of vitality, passion and self-criticism. Her energy and
vitality demanded an outlet, an object.

"Don't feel like that," she said gently. "Your looks will come back.
Do let me see your face. It is early days yet--the marks will
disappear, grow fainter. It is only one year--give it time, forget all
about it in hard work, and while you are working. Nature will be
working too."

"No, no!" Millicent cried. "Never! I am going to fly from my
friends--I am going to hide myself."

Margaret had attempted to raise her thick veil, but Millicent refused
to let her. Instead, she threw another thickness of it over her face.
Her pride could not stand even Margaret's pity and comforting words.

"I am humbled enough as it is," she said. "Don't do that."

"I didn't want to humble you," Margaret said. "I only thought, and I
do still think, that you are exaggerating the change in your
appearance.