She smiled maliciously.  “You see me here—­helpless.  And yet, in all these months I’ve prayed for only one thing—­to have strength enough one day to rise in this chair and throw myself upon them both...  Oh, but I should like to kill them!...  You talk about suffering ... but do you know what it is to feel the caress of hands that are waiting to lay hold of everything that was once yours?...  I have six months more to live.  The doctor told me yesterday...  Six months more, getting weaker every day, until at last—­”

She brought her hands up in a vigorous flourish, which died pitifully.  He felt a contempt for his impotence.  He dropped into a seat opposite her.

“Tell me about it ... all ... from the beginning,” he begged.

She opened the floodgates cautiously at first ... going back to the day when it had come upon her that she was a stranger in her own house. ...  Hilmer’s moral lapses had never affronted her.  She knew men—­or her father, to be exact, and his father before him.  They were as God made them, no better and no worse.  Perhaps she had never admitted it, but she would no doubt have felt a contempt for a man without the capacity for truant inconstancies.  But she had her place from which it was inconceivable that she could be dislodged. ...  On that day when she had realized that this position was threatened she had been put to one of two alternatives—­open revolt or deceitful acceptance.  She had chosen the latter.  In the end her choice was justified, for she had begun to undermine Helen Starratt’s content with subtle purring which dripped a steady pool of disquiet.

“She hasn’t abandoned herself yet,” she said, moving her claws restlessly.  “She’s too clever for that...  She wants my place.  Hilmer’s like all men—­he won’t have a mistress for a wife...  And she never would be any man’s mistress while she saw a chance for the other thing ... she’s too—­”

She broke off suddenly, unable to find a word inclusive enough for all the contempt she wished to crowd into it.  He was learning things.  She could have ignored a frank courtesan with disdainful aloofness, but discreetly veiled wantonness made her articulate.  When she mentioned Ginger her voice took a soft pity, mixed with certain condescension.  She was sympathetic, but there were still many things she could not understand.

“She used to come and pass me every morning,” Mrs. Hilmer explained, “and your wife would look at her from head to foot.  One day I said, ‘Who is that woman?’ ...  ‘How should I know?’ she answered me.  And I knew from her manner that she was lying.  The next day I spoke deliberately.  After that it was easy...  She is a strange girl.  She would come and read me such beautiful things and then go away to that! ...  ’How is it possible for one woman to be so good and so bad?’ I asked her once.  And all she said was, ’How would you have us—­all devil or all saint?’ ...  During all this