Sent in for me to come to him in my prison clothes----"

Lydia's breath quickened as she spoke of the outrage.

"He didn't come to gloat over you."

"What did he come for then?"

To her own surprise Eleanor heard her own voice saying, as if unaided it
tapped some source of knowledge never before open to her, "Because you
know very well, Lydia, the man's in love with you."

Lydia sprang forward like a cat.

"Never say such a thing as that again!" she said. "You don't understand,
but it degrades me, it pollutes me! Love me! That man! I'd kill him if I
thought he dared!"

Nothing rendered Eleanor so calm as excitement in others.

"Well," she said, "perhaps I'm mistaken," and appeared to let the matter
drop; but the other would not have it.

"Of course you're mistaken! But you must have had some reason for saying
such a thing. You're not the kind of person, Eleanor, who goes about
having disgusting suspicions like that without a reason."

"Do you really want me to give you a reason or are you only waiting to
tear me to pieces, whatever I say?"

Lydia sat down and caught her hands between her knees, determined to be
good.

"I want your reason," she said.

Reasons were not so easy, Eleanor found. She spoke slowly.

"I saw all through your trial that Dan was not like himself, that he was
struggling with something stronger than he. He is a man who has always
had terrible weaknesses, temptations----"

"He drinks," said Lydia, and there was a note of almost boastful triumph
in her tone.

"No"--Eleanor was very firm about it--"in recent years only once."

"More than once, Eleanor."

"Only once, in a time of emotional strain. What was the emotion? You had
just been sentenced. It came to me suddenly that if he were in love with
you--it would explain everything."

"If he hated me--that would explain it too."

"The two emotions are pretty close, Lydia."

"Close?" Lydia exclaimed violently. "It shows that you have never felt
either."

"Have you?"

"Yes, I've felt hate. It's poisoned and withered me for over two years
now, and I don't mean to bear it any more. I mean to get rid of it this
way--to hurt that man enough to satisfy myself."

Eleanor rose slowly, and the two women stood a little apart, looking at
each other. Then Eleanor said, "You'll never get rid of it that way.
Don't do it, Lydia, whatever you mean to do."

"You're pleading for that man, Nell. Don't! It's ignominious."

"I'm pleading for