“You may not; but I shall.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“I shall go with him myself.”

“If you do—­if you associate yourself with those disreputable people at all—­you shall never enter this house again.”

Her voice thrilled with the terror of her threat.

“I can look forward to the prospect of that with no great reluctance,” said Sally quietly.

“Oh!” Mrs. Bishop exclaimed.  “Oh!” Then her daughters wisely led her from the room.

“I’ve left my egg unfinished,” she said brokenly as she departed.

They fondly believed that Sally could not face the ominous threat of her mother until they beheld her trunks ready packed in the hall.  Then Elsie came to her.

“Sally,” she said, with the voice of one who carries out implacable orders, “do you realize that mother meant what she said?”

“Realize it?  I suppose so.  I haven’t thought about it.”

“You don’t mean that.  You must have thought about it.  Do you realize that you’ll never see her again?”

“Yes, quite.  But not particularly because she says so.  I’d never come back again if she were to beg me to.  It means a lot to you perhaps, it means nothing to me.”

Elsie looked at her in horrified alarm, as at one sinking into the nethermost hell.

“I could never have believed you’d say anything like that,” she murmured under her breath.  “Can’t you see that you’re breaking the fifth commandment?”

“Can’t mother see,” retorted Sally, with vehemence, “that she’s breaking all the unwritten commandments of charity—­love your enemies—­do good to them that hate you?  I’d break the fifth commandment fifty times rather than come back and live with all of you again.  You’re narrow, you’re cruel, you’re hard, and you save yourselves from your own consciences by calling it Christianity.”

When this was all repeated, as inwardly she hoped it would be, they could not believe her to be the same Sally.  Mrs. Bishop came out into the hall where she and Maurie were waiting for the vehicle which was to convey them to the station.

“You’re not going to say good-bye, Sally?” she asked, drawing her aside into the dining-room.

“I saw no necessity.  Wouldn’t it be a farce?”

“You can talk like that when you’re never going to see me again?”

“I don’t see why stating a fact should be unsuitable to the occasion.  It would be a farce.  You hate me—­I’m not fond of you.  Yet you would be willing to kiss me—­make a sentimental good-bye of it, because you want to do what you know is wrong—­cruel, unkind—­in the most Christian-like way.”

Here indeed was the spirit of Janet speaking from Sally’s lips.  The contrast, in fact, which induced Janet to preach her philosophy to Sally, was now apparent to Sally herself, between her and her mother.  She saw through all the little petty sentimentalities, all the false self-deceits with which the worldly mind of many a clergyman’s wife shields itself from rebuke.