And Rachael, breathing a little hard, stood looking down at Magsie with something so benign, so tragic, and so heroic in her beautiful face that the younger woman was a little awed, even a little puzzled, where she had been so sure.  She would have liked to put her arms about her hostess’s neck, and to seal their extraordinary treaty with a kiss, but she knew better.  As well attempt to kiss the vision of a ministering angel.  Rachael, one arm on Magsie’s shoulder, her whole figure and her face expressing painful indecision, had never seemed so remote, so goddesslike.

“And—­and you won’t tell him of this?” faltered Magsie.

“Ah—­you must leave that to me,” Rachael said with a sad smile.

For a few seconds longer they looked at each other.  Then Rachael dropped her arm, and Magsie moved a little.  The visitor knew that another sentence must be in farewell, but she felt strangely awkward, curiously young and crude.  Rachael, except for the falling of her arm, was motionless.  Her eyes were far away, she seemed utterly unconscious of herself and her surroundings.  Magsie wanted to think of one more thing to say, one clinching sentence, but everything seemed to be said.  Something of the other woman’s weariness and coldness of spirit seemed to communicate itself to her; she felt tired and desolate.  It seemed a small and insignificant matter that she had had her momentous talk with Rachael, and had succeeded in her venture.  Love was failing her, life was failing.

“I hope—­I haven’t distressed you—­too awfully, Rachael,” Magsie faltered.  She had not thought of herself, a few hours ago, as distressing Rachael at all.  She had thought that Rachael might be scornful, might be cold, might overwhelm her with her magnificence of manner, and shame her for her daring.  She had come in on a sudden impulse, and had had no time for any thought but that her revelation would be exciting and dramatic and astonishing.  She was sincerely anxious to have Warren freed, but not so swept away by emotion that she could not appreciate this lovely setting and her own picturesque position in the eyes of her beautiful rival.

“Oh, no!” Rachael answered, perfunctorily polite, and with her eyes still fixed darkly on space.  And as if half to herself, she added, in a breathless, level undertone: 

“It all rests with Warren!”

Presently Magsie breathed a faint “Good-bye,” following it with an almost inaudible murmur that Dennison would let her out.  Then the white figure was gone from the gloom of the room, and Rachael was alone.

For a time she was so dazed, so emotionally exhausted by the event of the last hour, that she stood on, fixed, unseeing, one hand pressed against her side as if she stopped with it the mouth of a wound.  Occasionally she drew a long, sharp breath as the dying sometimes breathe.

“It all rests with Warren,” she said presently, half-aloud, and in a toneless, passive voice.  And slowly she turned and slowly went to the window.