k was in her brain,
for the child was a creator, and no blow like this had any lasting
power over her work. What she considered was Margaret's revelation of
herself as something else than Margaret, and what she did resent
bitterly was being forced into deception in order to shield her. She
was in fact hard, although she did not know it. Her usually gentle
nature had become like adamant before this. She felt unlike herself
as she said bitterly:

"People do not always tell ministers, and you cannot tell Mr. von
Rosen, Margaret. I forbid it. Go home and keep still."

"I cannot bear it."

"You must bear it."

"They are going to give me a dinner, the Zenith Club," said Margaret.

"You will have to accept it."

"I cannot, Annie Eustace, of what do you think me capable? I am not
as bad as you think. I cannot and will not accept that dinner and
make the speech which they will expect and hear all the
congratulations which they will offer. I cannot."

"You must accept the dinner, but I don't see that you need make the
speech," said Annie, who was herself aghast over such extremity of
torture.

"I will not," said Margaret. She was very pale and her lips were a
tight line. Her eyes were opaque and lustreless. She was in reality
suffering what a less egotistical nature could not even imagine. All
her life had Margaret Edes worshipped and loved Margaret Edes. Now
she had done an awful thing. The falling from the pedestal of a
friend is nothing to hurling oneself from one's height of self-esteem
and that she had done. She stood, as it were, over the horrible body
of her once beautiful and adored self. She was not actually
remorseful and that made it all the worse. She simply could not evade
the dreadful glare of light upon her own imperfections; she who had
always thought of herself as perfect, but the glare of knowledge came
mostly from her appreciation of the attitude of her friends and
lovers toward what she had done. Suppose she went home and told
Wilbur. Suppose she said, "I did not write that book. My friend,
Annie Eustace, wrote it. I am a thief, and worse than a thief." She
knew just how he would look at her, his wife, his Margaret, who had
never done wrong in his eyes. For the first time in her life she was
afraid, and yet how could she live and bear such torture and not
confess? Confession would be like a person ill unto death, giving up,
and seeking the peace of a sick chamber and the rest of bed and the
care o