“Oh, I do believe it!” said Billy fervently, kneeling on the floor at Rachael’s feet, her wet, earnest eyes on Rachael’s face, her arms crossed on the older woman’s knees.

“I believe,” Rachael said, “that in those seven years I might have won your father to something better if I had cared.  He wasn’t a hard man, just desperately weak.  I’ve thought of it so often, of late, Bill.  There might have been children.  Clancy had a funny little pathetic fondness for babies.  And he was a loving sort of person—–­”

“Ah, wasn’t he?” Billy’s eyes brimmed again.  “Always that to me.  But not to you, Rachael, and little cat that I was—­I knew it.  But you see I had no particular reverence for marriage, either.  How should I?  Why, my own mother and my half-sisters—­hideous girls, they are, too—­were pointed out to me in Rome a year ago.  I didn’t know them!  I could have made your life much easier, Rachael.  I wish I had.  I was thinking that this afternoon when Breck was letting you carry him out into deep water, clinging to you so cunningly.  He is a cute little kid, isn’t he?  And he’ll love you to death!  He’s a great kisser.”

“He’s a great darling,” smiled Rachael, “and all small boys I adore.  He’ll begin to put on weight in no time.  And—­I was thinking, Bill—­he would have reconciled Clancy to you and Joe, perhaps; one can’t tell!  If I had not left him, Clarence might have been living to-day, that I know.  He only—­did what he did in one of those desperate lonely times he used to dread so.”

“Ah, but he was terrible to you, Rachael!” Billy said generously.  “You deserved happiness if anyone ever did!” Again she did not understand Rachael’s sharp sigh, nor the little silence that followed it.  Their talk ran on quite naturally to other topics:  they discussed all the men and women of that old world they both had known, the changes, the newcomers, and the empty places.  Mrs. Barker Emory had been much taken up by Mary Moulton, and was a recognized leader at Belvedere Bay now; Straker Thomas was in a sanitarium; old Lady Torrence was dead; Marian Cowles had snatched George Pomeroy away from one of the Vanderwall girls at the last second; Thomas Prince was paralyzed; Agnes Chase had married a Denver man whom nobody knew; the Parker Hoyts had a delicate little baby at last; Vivian Sartoris had left her husband, nobody knew why.  Billy was quite her old self as she retailed these items and many more for Rachael’s benefit.

But Rachael saw that the years had made a sad change in her before the three days’ visit was over.  Poor little, impudent, audacious Billy was gone forever—­Billy, who had always been so exquisite in dress, so prettily conspicuous on the floor of the ballroom, so superbly self-conscious in her yachting gear, her riding-clothes, her smart little tennis costumes!  She was but a shadow of her old self now.  The smart hats, the silk stockings, the severely trim frocks were still hers, but the old delicious youth, her roses,