“Go on,” she said; “go on, tell me!”

“I have nothing more to say.”

“Yes, you have—­you have much more.  You have this to say—­you love him and want him, you wish to take him from me.  Is that it, Ellice?”

“If you loved him I would not have dared to come.  I would have told myself that I was content.  But you don’t.  I have watched you—­yes, spied on you—­looking for some sign of tenderness that would prove to me that you loved him; but it never came.  And so I know that you are marrying Johnny Everard with no love, accepting all the great love that he is offering to you and giving him nothing in exchange.  Oh, it is not fair!”

“It is not fair,” Joan said; “it is not fair, and yet I thought of that.  I told him just what you have told me, and still he seemed to be content.”

“Because he loves you so, and because he has hope in the future, because in spite of everything he still hopes that he might win your heart, and I know that he never can.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I—­I think you have already given your heart away.”

And now Joan’s eyes flamed, the anger came back.  “By what right do you say that?  How dared you say that?”

“It is only what I believed.  I believed that a woman so sweet, so beautiful, so good as you, must love.  You could not live your life without love.  If it has not come yet, then it will come some day, and then if you are his—­his wife, it will come too late.  You are made for love, Joan, just as he is.  You could not live your life without it—­you would feel need for it.  Oh yes, you think I am a child, a foolish, romantic schoolgirl, a stupid little thing, talking, talking, but in your heart you know that I am right.”

“But if he—­loves me,” Joan said softly, “if he loves me, little Ellice, then how can I break my word to him?”

“I do not ask you to break your word to him, only tell him, tell him the truth again.  Tell him what I have told you, tell him—­if there is someone else, if you have already met someone you care for—­tell him that too, so that he will know how impossible it must ever be that you will give him the love he hoped to win.  Tell him that, be frank and truthful.  Remember, it is for all your lives—­all his life and all yours.  When he realises that your heart can never be his, do you think he will not surfer more, will not his sufferings be longer drawn out than if you told him so frankly now?  If the break was to come now, to come and be ended for ever—­but to live together, to live a mock life, to live beneath the same roof, to share one another’s lives, and yet know one another’s souls to be miles and miles apart—­oh, Joan, you would suffer, and he too, he perhaps even more than you.”

“And you love him?” Joan said softly.  “You love him, Ellice?”

“With all my heart and soul.  I would die for him.  It—­it sounds foolish, this sort of thing is foolish, the kind of words a silly girl would say, yet it is the truth.”