Their eyes met for an instant.  Bertha looked rather grave, but with her wonted kindliness of expression; Rosamund’s brows were wrinkled in distress, and her lips trembled.

“I’ve seen it coming since last Christmas,” she continued, in a hurried, tremulous undertone.  “You know he came down to Bath; that was our last meeting; and I felt that something was wrong.  Ah, so hard to know oneself!  I wanted to talk to you about it; but then I said to myself—­what can Bertha do but tell me to know my own mind?  And that’s just what I couldn’t come to,—­to understand my own feelings.  I was changing, I knew that.  I dreaded to look into my own thoughts, from day to day.  Above all, I dreaded to sit down and write to him.  Oh, the hateful falsity of those letters—­Yet what could I do, what could I do?  I had no right to give such a blow, unless I felt that anything else was utterly, utterly impossible.”

“And at last you did feel it?”

“In Switzerland—­yes.  It came like a flash of lightning.  I was walking up that splendid valley—­you remember my description—­up toward the glacier.  That morning I had had a letter, naming the very day for our marriage, and speaking of the house—­your house at Putney—­he meant to take.  I had said to myself—­’It must be; I can do nothing.  I haven’t the courage.’  Then, as I was walking, a sort of horror fell upon me, and made me tremble; and when it passed I saw that, so far from not having the courage to break, I should never dare to go through with it.  And I went back to the hotel, and sat down and wrote, without another moment’s thought or hesitation.”

“What else could you have done?” said Bertha, with a sigh of relief.  “When it comes to horror and tremblings!”

There was a light in her eye which seemed the precursor of a smile; but her voice was not unsympathetic, and Rosamund knew that one of Bertha Cross smiles was worth more in the way of friendship than another’s tragic emotion

“Have patience with me,” she continued, “whilst I try to explain it all.  The worst of my position is, that so many people will know what I have done, and so few of them, hardly any one, will understand why.  One can’t talk to people about such things.  Even Winnie and father—­I’m sure they don’t really understand—­though I’m afraid they’re both rather glad.  What a wretched thing it is to be misjudged.  I feel sure, Bertha, that it’s just this kind of thing that makes a woman sit down and write a novel—­where she can speak freely in disguise, and do herself justice.  Don’t you think so?”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” replied the listener, thoughtfully.  “But does it really matter?  If you know you’re only doing what you must do?”

“But that’s only how it seems to me.  Another, in my place, would very likely see the must on the other side.  Of course it’s a terribly complicated thing—­a situation like this.  I haven’t the slightest idea how one ought to be guided.  One could argue and reason all day long about it—­as I have done with myself for weeks past.”