while cutting, and Kathryn's nerve was now
set to her task. She unrelentingly eyed her victim. She went on:

"I can see how this must shock you. I sent my car on to the inn. I
wanted a walk and--well! I came upon this place. Fate is such a
strange thing."

Kathryn ran her words along rather wildly. The silence of her
companion, the calm way in which she was regarding her, were having an
unpleasant effect. When Kathryn became aware of her own voice she was
apt to talk too much--she grew confidential.

"Mr. Northrup's mother is ill. She needs him. The way I have known all
this right along is simply a miracle."

How much more Kathryn might have said she was never to know, for
Mary-Clare raised a hand as though to stay the inane torrent.

"What can you possibly mean," she asked, and her eyes darkened, "by
knowing _this_ all along? I do not understand--what have you known?"

Then Kathryn sank in a morass.

"Oh! do be sensible," she said, and her voice was hard and cold. "You
must see I have found you out--why pretend? When a man like Mr.
Northrup leaves home and forgets his duties--does not even write,
buries himself in such a place as this and stays on--what does it
mean? What can it possibly mean?"

Mary-Clare was spared much of what Kathryn was creating because she
was so far away--so far, far away from the true significance of it
all. She was seeing Northrup as Kathryn had never seen him; would
never see him. She realized his danger. It was all so sudden and
revolting. Only recently had she imagined his past, his environment;
she had taken him as a wonderful experience in her barren, sterile
life, but now she considered him as threatened from an unsuspected
source. A natural revulsion from the type that Kathryn Morris
represented for a moment oppressed her, but she dared not think of
that nor of her own right to resent the hateful slurs cast upon her.
She must do what she could for Northrup--do it more or less blindly,
crudely, but she must go as she saw light and was given time.

"You are terribly wrong about--everything." Mary-Clare spoke quietly
but her words cut like bits of hail. "If you are going, as you say, to
be Mr. Northrup's wife, you must try and believe what I am saying now
for your own sake, but more for his."

Kathryn tried to say "Insolence!" but could not; she merely sat back
in her chair and flashed an angry glance that Mary-Clare did not
heed.

"Mr. Northrup is writing a beautiful book. T