doesn't run up against
other sorts; it hurts to do that'--at the pain of that clash of codes
her brows knit--'and that's why we won't try m-mixing the sorts; it
wouldn't be what you call fair, on either sort.'

Prudence heard the finality in that: it found its echo in her soul; but
still she pleaded Warren's cause (he cared so much) with:

'But if both cared to.... Oh, that isn't quite all there is to it, I
know--I'm not a fool who can only see one thing--but it's a thing that
should count a great deal. Of all the many, many things, I believe
that's the one that, perhaps, in the end counts most.'

Betty admitted it.

'More than any one other; but not more than all the others together. You
see, there are rather many, and it wouldn't do. It wouldn't w-work, you
know it wouldn't; and--and it would hurt rather.... Oh, it wouldn't do.'

She clenched her lip again between her teeth, perhaps to steady it.

Prudence thought it all over, admitting it true, before saying, with a
quick tremor in her own voice:

'But, perhaps, sometime--afterwards....'

Betty unclasped her hands from her knee and leaned her chin on them, and
looked straight in front of her.

'No,' she said; 'I think never. Then she gave it a turn, swerving as
usual from her own part, with 'You know it--you yourself.'

Prudence said nothing. That she knew it hardly needed affirmation; she
knew it with such a sad, hopeless certainty. For the eternal roads run
straitly, and their running is between gateless walls. The grey,
artist's eyes were suddenly wet and blind, with a swift surging of many
feelings. Seeing them, Betty said again:

'It wouldn't work--for any of us,' with a new gentle cadence in her
tone. Then she went on: 'Tommy and I have got each other. We can help
each other, and no one else in the world can help us. Don't you see?
Because we know each other so awfully well; we mean a good deal to each
other, you know. There's always been just us two. There always will be,
and that's the one thing that really matters--the one thing that always
will matter. In the end no one else c-counts.'

In that was the ring of certainty; it had not needed to be thought out;
it was as if it had always been there, waiting to be defined.

After a moment Betty went on, with this time a little tremor in the
tired monotony of her voice.

'I think I should like you to understand--how it's been, you know,
always. We've had each other, but we've had no one else much