a friend of his. Eleanor could easily
be persuaded that his victim had been so tamed and crushed in prison
that she had come to admire him, to look differently on the world.

Suddenly Lydia sat straight up in her bed. And hadn't she changed? In
the old days she had never felt with more bitter violence than she was
feeling now. The excitement of her revenge had wiped out every other
interest. The flame of her hatred had destroyed the whole structure of
her new philosophy. She sat up in her bed and wrung her hands. What
could she do? What could she do? The mere thought of that man changed
her back into being the woman she hated to be. She would rather die than
live as her old self, but how could she help thinking of him when the
idea of injuring him was more vivid, more exciting, than any other idea
in the world? She had come out of prison resolved that her first action
would be to get a pardon for Evans, and here she was forgetting her
obligations and her remorse, forgetting everything but a desire to wound
and destroy. He had the power to make her what she loathed to be.

Her room was at the back of the house, and the sun, finding some chink
between the houses behind the Thorne house, crept in under the shades
and began moving slowly across the plain, dark, velvet carpet. It had
time to move some distance while she sat there immovable, unaware of her
surroundings.

Gradually she came to see that she must choose between the two. Either
she must give up forever the idea of revenging herself on O'Bannon or
she must give up all the peace and wisdom that she had so painfully
learned--she had almost lost it already, and she had not been
twenty-four hours out of prison.

An hour later Eleanor was wakened by the opening of her door. Lydia was
standing at the foot of her bed, grasping the edge of it in her two
white hands. It was Eleanor's first good look at her in the light of
day. She was startled by Lydia's beauty--a kind of beauty she had never
had before. No one could now have likened her to a picture by Cabanel of
the Star of the Harem. Everything sleek and hard and smooth had gone.
She looked more like the picture of some ravaged, pale Spanish saint,
still so young that the inner struggle had molded without lining her
face. She stood staring at Eleanor, her dark hair standing out about her
face, and her pale dressing gown defining the beautiful line of her
shoulders, as she raised them, pressing her hands down on the f