“I see,” Rachael said.

“Greg said, ’This is only a dream, Magsie, and we mustn’t let ourselves dream!’” Magsie went on.  “But—­but sometimes dreams come true, don’t they?”

She stopped.  There was an unearthly silence in the room.

“I’ve tried to fight it, and I cannot,” Magsie presently said in a small, tired voice; “it comes between me and everything I do.  I’m not a great actress—­I know that.  I don’t even want to be any more.  I want to go away where no one will ever see me or hear of me again.  I’ve heard of this—­feeling”—­she sent Rachael a brave if rather uncertain smile—­“but I never believed in it before!  I never believed that when—­when you care”—­Rachael was grateful to be spared the great word—­“you can’t live or breathe or think anything”—­again there was an evasion—­“but the one thing!”

And with a long, tired sigh, again she relapsed into silence.  Rachael could find nothing to say.

“Honestly, honestly,” the younger woman presently added, “you mustn’t think that either one of us saw this coming!  We were simply carried away.  It was only this year, only a few months ago, that I began to think that perhaps—­perhaps if you understood, you would set—­Greg free.  You want to live just for the boys, you love the country, and books, and a few friends.  Your life would go on, Rachael, just as it has, only he would be happy, and I would be happy.  Oh, my God,” said Magsie, with quivering lips and brimming eyes, “how happy I would be!”

Rachael looked at her in impassive silence.

“At all events,” the visitor said more composedly, “I have been planning for a week to come to you, Rachael, and have this talk.  I may have done more harm than good—­I don’t know; but from the instant I thought of it I have simply been drawn, as if I were under a spell.  I haven’t said what I meant to, I know that.  I haven’t said”—­her smile was wistful and young and sweet, as, rising from her chair, she stood looking down at Rachael—­“how badly I feel that it—­it happens so,” said Magsie.  “But you know how deeply I’ve always admired you!  It must seem strange to you that I would come to you about it.  But Ruskin, wasn’t it, and Wagner—­didn’t they do something like this?  I knew, even if things were changed between you and Greg, that you would be big enough and good enough to help us all to find the—­the solution, if there is one!”

Rachael stood up, too, so near her guest that she could put one hand on Magsie’s shoulder.  The girl looked up at her with the faith of a distressed child.

“I’m glad you did come, Magsie,” said Rachael painfully, “although I never dreamed, until this afternoon, that—­this—­could possibly have been in Warren’s thoughts.  You speak of—­divorce, quite naturally, as of course anyone may, to me.  But I never had thought of it.  It’s a sad tangle, whatever comes of it, and perhaps you’re right in feeling that we had better face it, and try to find the solution, if, as you say, there is one.”