She leaned forward to look in her companion’s face.

“Oh, yes, Kate,” said Honora.  “It really is as it should be with me.  I’m looking forward, now, to what is to come.  To begin with, there are the children shining like little stars at the end of my journey; and there’s the necessity of working for them.  I’m glad of that—­I’m glad I have to work for them.  Perhaps I shall be offered a place at the University of Wisconsin.  I think I should be if I gave any indication that I had such a desire.  The president and I are old friends.  Oh, yes, indeed, I’m very thankful that I’m able to look forward again with something like expectancy—­”

The words died on her lips.  She was arrested as if an angry god had halted her.  Kate, startled, looked up.  Before them, marble-faced and hideously abashed,—­yet beautiful with an insistent beauty,—­stood Mary Morrison, like Honora, static with pain.

It seemed as if it must be a part of that fantastic, dream-like scene.  So many visions were born of the desert that this, not unreasonably, might be one.  But, no, these two women who had played their parts in an appalling drama, were moving, involuntarily, as it seemed, nearer to each other.  For a second Kate thought of dragging Honora away, till it came to her by some swift message of the spirit that Honora did not wish to avoid this encounter.  Perhaps it seemed to her like a fulfillment—­the last strain of a wild and dissonant symphony.  It was the part of greater kindness to drop her arm and stand apart.

“Shall we speak, Mary,” said Honora at length.  “Or shall we pass on in silence?”

“It isn’t for me to say,” wavered the other.  “Any way, it’s too late for words to matter.”

“Yes,” agreed Honora.  “Quite too late.”

They continued to stare at each other—­so like, yet so unlike.  It was Honora’s face which was ravaged, though Mary had sinned the sin.  True, pallor and pain were visible in Mary’s face, even in the disguising light of that strange hour and place, but back of it Kate perceived her indestructible frivolity.  She surmised how rapidly the scenes of Mary’s drama would succeed each other; how remorse would yield to regret, regret to diminishing grief, grief to hope, hope to fresh adventures with life.  Here in all verity was “the eternal feminine,” fugitive, provocative, unspiritualized, and shrinking the one quality, fecundity, which could have justified it.

But Honora was speaking, and her low tones, charged with a mortal grief, were audible above the tramping of many feet, the throbbing of the engines, and the talking and the laughter.

“If you had stayed to die with him,” she was saying, “I could have forgiven you everything, because I should have known then that you loved him as he hungered to be loved.”

“He wouldn’t let me,” Mary wailed.  “Honestly, Honora—­”

“Wouldn’t let you!” The scorn whipped Mary’s face scarlet.