ding! and with you I can be myself. It
isn't really necessary now to be any one else--now that I shall so soon
have to go; but I have got into such a habit of it with the others that
I shouldn't know how to stop. With you I can talk freely, and you are
the only one."

"So long as it doesn't tire you," Margaret answered.

"It tires me a great deal more to be silent," responded Mrs. Thorne.

Often, therefore, when Margaret came down to East Angels, Mrs. Thorne
would send Garda into the open air to stroll about, or rest under the
rose-tree, and then, while Madam Ruiz, or Mrs. Carew, or whoever
happened to be in attendance, was sleeping to make up for the broken
rest of the coming night, she would talk to her northern friend, talk
with an openness which was in itself a sign that the many cautions of a
peculiarly cautious life were drawing to a close. One reason for this
freedom was that in spite of the apparent improvement, there were no
illusions between these two regarding the hoped-for recovery. "We are
northerners, Margaret, and _we_ know," Mrs. Thorne had said one day,
when Margaret had raised her so that she could cough with less
difficulty. "Consumption--_our_ kind--these southerners cannot grasp!"
She did not wish to die, poor woman; she clung to life with desperation;
nevertheless, she found a momentary satisfaction in a community of
feeling with Margaret over this southern lack.

"Oh, these southern lacks--how Garda would have been part of them!" she
went on. "If I had had to leave her here, if you had not promised to
take her, how inevitably she would have been sunk in them, lost in them!
she would never have got out. Oh! I so hate and loathe it all--the idle,
unrealizing, contented life of this tiresome, idle coast. They amounted
to something once, perhaps; but their day is over, and will never come
back. They don't know it; you couldn't make them believe it even if you
should try. That is what makes you rage--they're so completely mistaken
and so completely satisfied! Every idea they have is directly contrary
to all the principles of the government under which they exist But what
is that to them? They think themselves superior to the government. I'm
not exaggerating, it's really true; I can speak from experience after my
life with that"--she paused, then chose her word clearly--"with that
devilish Old Madam!"

It seemed to Margaret as if this poor exile were imbibing a few last
draughts of vitality from th