“Why did I do it?” she said wildly, springing to her feet.  “It was idiotic!  Why didn’t I just accept the boy’s story, and say quietly, ’Yes, I was staying with the Tanners’?  And why didn’t I defy Roger—­go straight to George, and hand him over to the police?  Don’t you see why?  Because it is true!—­it’s true!—­and I’m terrified.  If I lost George, I should kill myself.  I never thought I should be—­I could be—­in love with anybody like this.  But yet I suppose it was in me all the time.  I was always seeking—­reaching out—­to somebody I could love with every bit of me, soul and body—­somebody I could follow—­for I can’t manage for myself—­I’m not like you, Janet.  And now I’ve found him—­and—­Do you know what that is?”

She pulled a letter out of her pocket, and looked at Janet through a mist of despairing tears.

“It’s a letter from George.  It came this morning.  He wants me to marry him at once—­next week.  He’s got some new work in France, and he saw that I was miserable because he was going away.  And why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I? I love him.  There’s nothing wrong with me, except that wretched story.  Well, there are two reasons.  First”—­she spoke with slow and bitter emphasis—­“I don’t believe for a moment Roger will keep his word.  I know him.  He is frightfully ill.  He says he’s dying.  He may die—­before he’s got through this money.  That would be the best thing that could happen to me—­wouldn’t it?  But probably he won’t die—­and certainly he’ll get through the money!  Then he’ll come back—­and I shall begin bribing him again—­and telling lies to hide it from George—­and in the end it’ll be no use—­for Roger’s quite reckless—­you can’t appeal to him through anything but money.  He’ll see George, whatever I do, and try it on with him.  And then—­George will know how to deal with him, I dare say—­but when we are alone—­and he asks me—­”

She sank down again on the floor, kneeling, and put her hands on Janet’s knees.

“You see, Janet, don’t you?  You see?”

It was the cry of a soul in anguish.

“You poor, poor thing!”

Janet, trembling from head to foot, bowed her head on Rachel’s, and the two clung together, in silence, broken only by two deep sobs from Rachel.  Then Janet disengaged herself.  She was pale, but no longer agitated, and her blue eyes which were her only beauty were clear and shining.

“You’ll let me say just what I feel, Rachel?”

“Of course.”

“You can’t marry him without telling him.  No, no—­you couldn’t do that!”

Rachel said nothing.  She was, sitting on the floor, her eyes turned away from Janet.

“You couldn’t do that, Rachel,” Janet resumed, as though she were urgently thinking her way; “you’d never have a happy moment.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” said Rachel, throwing up her head with a half scornful gesture.  “One says that—­but how do you know?  I might never think of it again—­if Roger and that man Dempsey were out of the way.  It’s dead—­it’s dead!  Why do we trouble about such things!”