.

"And is _he_," she said, "afraid?"

"Not for himself," I said, and she asked me: "For whom, then?" And I
said: "For Lankester." I told her that was what I'd meant when I
said just now that he couldn't do them both. And, as a matter of
fact, he wasn't going to do them both. He had given up one of them.

"Which?" she asked; and I said she might guess which.

But she said nothing. She sat there with her eyes fixed on me and
her lips parted slightly. It struck me that she was waiting for me,
in her dreadful silence, as if her life hung on what I should say.

"He has given up Lankester," I said.

I heard her breath go through her parted lips in a long sigh, and
she looked away from me.

"He cared," she said, "as much as that."

"He cared for _you_ as much," I said. I was a little doubtful as to
what she meant. But I know now.

She asked me if I had come to tell her that.

I said I thought it was as well she should realize it. But I'd come
to ask her--if she cared for him--to let him off. To--to----

She stopped me with it as I fumbled.

"To give Papa up?"

I said, to give him up as far as Grevill was concerned.

She reminded me that it was to be Grevill or nobody.

Then, I said, it had much better be nobody. If she didn't want to do
her father harm.

She did not answer. She was looking steadily at the fire burning in
the grate. At last she spoke.

"Mamma," she said, "will never give him up."

I suggested that I had better speak to Mrs. Wrackham.

"No," she said. "Don't. She won't understand." She rose. "I am not
going to leave it to Mamma."

She went to the fire and stirred it to a furious flame.

"Grevill will be here," she said, "in half an hour."

She walked across the room--I can see her going now--holding her
beautiful head high. She locked the door (I was locked in with
Antigone). She went to a writing-table where the "Memoirs" lay
spread out in parts; she took them and gathered them into a pile. I
was standing by the hearth and she came toward me; I can see her;
she was splendid, carrying them in her arms sacrificially. And she
laid them on the fire.

It took us half an hour to burn them. We did it in a sort of sacred
silence.

When it was all over and I saw her stand there, staring at a bit of
Wrackham's handwriting that had resisted to the last the purifying
flame, I tried to comfort her.

"Angelette," I said, "don't be unhappy. That was the kindest thing
you could do--and the be