u. Don't you think it's a shame?"

Rachel answered passionately--

"I do."

She answered thus because she had a tremendous desire to answer thus.
To herself she said: "Do I?... Yes, I do." Louis' eyes drew sympathy
out of her. It seemed to her to be of the highest importance that
those appealing eyes should not appeal in vain.

"Item, he made a fearful fuss about you and me being at the cinema
last night."

"I should like to know what it's got to do with him!" said Rachel,
almost savagely. The word "item" puzzled her. Not understanding it,
she thought she had misheard.

"That's what I thought, too," said Louis, and added, very gravely:
"At the same time I'm really awfully sorry. Perhaps I oughtn't to
have asked you. It was my fault. But old Batch would make the worst of
anything."

Rachel replied with feverish conviction--

"Mr. Batchgrew ought to be ashamed. You weren't to blame, and I won't
hear of it!"

Louis started forward with a sudden movement of the left arm.

"You're magnificent," he said, with emotion.

Rachel trembled, and shut her eyes. She heard his voice again, closer
to her, repeating with even greater emotion: "You're magnificent."
Tears were in her eyes. Through them she looked at him. And his form
was so graceful, his face so nice, so exquisitely kind and lovable and
loving, that her admiration became intense, even to the point of
pain. She thought of Batchgrew, not with hate, but with pity. He was
a monster, but he could not help it. He alone was responsible for all
slanders against Louis. He alone had put Mrs. Maldon against Louis.
Louis was obviously the most innocent of beings. Mrs. Maiden's
warning, "The woman who married him would suffer horribly," was
manifestly absurd. "Suffer horribly"--what a stinging phrase, like a
needle broken in a wound! She felt tired and weak, above all tired of
loneliness.

His hand was on hers. She trembled anew. She was not Rachel, but
some new embodiment of surrender and acquiescence. And the change was
delicious, fearful.... She thought: "I could die for him." She forgot
that a few minutes before she had been steeling herself against him.
She wanted him to kiss her, and waited an eternity. And when he had
kissed her, and she was in a maze of rapture, a tiny idea shaped
itself clearly in her mind for an instant: "This is wrong. But I don't
care. He is mine"--and then melted like a cloud in a burning sky. And
a sense of the miraculousness of destiny