“It would be dead,” said Janet in a low voice, “if you’d told him—­and he’d forgiven!”

“What has he to do with it?” cried Rachel, stubbornly, “it was before he knew me.  I was a different being.”

“No—­it is always the same self, which we are making, all the time.  Don’t you see—­dear, dear Rachel!—­it’s your chance now to put it all behind you—­just by being true.  Oh, I don’t want to preach to you—­but I see it so clearly!”

“But it isn’t as a man would see it—­a man like George,” said Rachel, shaking her head.  “Look there”—­she pointed to a little bundle of letters lying on the table—­“there are letters from his people which he brought me this morning.  It’s awful!—­how they take me at his valuation—­just because he loves me.  I must be everything that’s good, because he says so.  And you can see what kind of people they are—­what they think of him—­and what they imagine about me—­what they think I must be—­for him to love me.  I don’t mean they’re prigs—­they aren’t a bit.  It’s just their life coming out, quite naturally.  You see what they are—­quite simply—­what they can’t help being, and what they expect from him and the woman he marries.  And he’s got to take me home to them—­some time—­to present me to them.  The divorce is difficult enough.  Even if they think of me as quite innocent, it will be hard for them, that George should marry a divorced woman.”

“What have they to do with it?” interrupted Janet.  “It’s only George that matters—­no other person has any right whatever to know!  You needn’t consider anybody else.”

“Yes—­but think of him.  It’s bad enough that I should know something he doesn’t know—­but at least he’s spared.  He can take me home to his mother—­whom he adores—­and if I know that I’m a cheat and a sham—­he doesn’t—­it will be all easy for him.”

Janet was silenced for the moment by the sheer passion of the voice.  She sat, groping a little, under the stress of her own thought, and praying inwardly—­without words—­for light and guidance.

“And think of me, please!” Rachel went on.  “If I tell him, it’s done—­for ever.  He’ll forgive me, I think.  He may be everything that’s dear, and good, and kind”—­her voice broke—­“but it’d hit him dreadfully hard.  A man like that can’t forget such a thing.  When I’ve once said it, I shall have changed everything between us.  He must think—­some time—­when he’s alone—­when I’m not there—­’It was Dick Tanner once—­it will be some one else another time!’ I shall have been pulled down from the place where he puts me now—­even after he knows all about Roger and the divorce—­pulled down for good and all—­however much he may pity me—­however good he may be to me.  It will be love perhaps—­but another kind of love.  He can’t trust me again.  No one could.  And it’s that I can’t bear—­I can’t bear!”

She looked defiantly at Janet, and the little room with its simple furnishings seemed too small a stage for such an energy of fear and distress.