"I am going to take the ten-thirty train," said Margaret.

"Where are you going?"

"To New York."

"Where in New York?"

"I am going."

"You are not going," said Alice Mendon; "you will return quietly to your own home like a sensible woman. You are running away, and you know it."

"Yes, I am," said Margaret in her desperate voice. "You would run away if you were in my place, Alice Mendon."

"I could never be in your place," said Alice, "but if I were, I should stay and face the situation." She spoke with quite undisguised scorn and yet with pity.

"You must think of your husband and children and not entirely of yourself," she added.

"If," said Margaret, stammering as she spoke, "I tell Wilbur, I think it will kill him. If I tell the children, they will never really have a mother again. They will never forget. But if I do not tell, I shall not have myself. It is a horrible thing not to have yourself, Alice Mendon."

"It is the only way."

"It is easy for you to talk, Alice Mendon. You have never been tempted."

"No," replied Alice, "that is quite true. I have never been tempted because--I cannot be tempted."

"It is no credit to you. You were made so."

"Yes, that is true also. I was made so. It is no credit to me."

Margaret tried to wrench her arm free from Annie's grasp.

"Let me go, Annie Eustace," she said. "I hate you."

"I don't care if you do," replied Annie. "I don't love you any more myself. I don't hate you, but I certainly don't love you."

"I stole your laurels," said Margaret, and she seemed to snap out the words.

"You could have had the laurels," said Annie, "without stealing, if I could have given them to you. It is not the laurels that matter. It is you."

"I will kill myself if it ever is known," said Margaret in a low horrified whisper. She cowered.

"It will never be known unless you yourself tell it," said Annie.

"I cannot tell," said Margaret. "I have thought it all over. I cannot tell and yet, how can I live and not tell?"

"I suppose," said Alice Mendon, "that always when people do wrong, they have to endure punishment. I suppose that is your punishment, Margaret. You have always loved yourself and now you will have to despise yourself. I don't see any way out of it."

"I am not the only woman who does such things," said Margaret, and there was defiance in her tone.

"No doubt, you have company," said Alice. "That does not make it easier for you." Alice, large and fair in her white draperies, towered over Margaret Edes like an embodied conscience. She was almost unendurable, like the ideal of which the other woman had fallen short. Her mere presence was maddening. Margaret actually grimaced at her.

"It is easy for you to preach," said she, "very easy, Alice Mendon.

You have not a nerve in your whole body. You have not an ungratified ambition. You neither love nor hate yourself, or other people. You want nothing on earth enough to make the lack of it disturb you."

"How well you read me," said Alice and she smiled a large calm smile as a statue might smile, could she relax her beautiful marble mouth.

"And as for Annie Eustace," said Margaret, "she has what I stole, and she knows it, and that is enough for her. Oh, both of you look down upon me and I know it."

"I look down upon you no more than I have always done," said Alice; but Annie was silent because she could not say that truly.

"Yes, I know you have always looked down upon me, Alice Mendon," said Margaret, "and you never had reason."

"I had the reason," said Alice, "that your own deeds have proved true."

"You could not know that I would do such a thing. I did not know it myself. Why, I never knew that Annie Eustace could write a book."

"I knew that a self-lover could do anything and everything to further her own ends," said Alice in her inexorable voice, which yet contained an undertone of pity.

She pitied Margaret far more than Annie could pity her for she had not loved her so much. She felt the little arm tremble in her clasp and her hand tightened upon it as a mother's might have done.

"Now, we have had enough of this," said she, "quite enough. Margaret, you must positively go home at once. I will take your suit-case, and return it to you to-morrow. I shall be out driving. You can get in without being seen, can't you?"

"I tell you both, I am going," said Margaret; "I cannot face what is before me."

"All creation has to face what is before. Running makes no difference," said Alice. "You will meet it at the end of every mile.

Margaret Edes, go home. Take care of your husband, and your children and keep your secret and let it tear you for your own good."

"They are to nominate Wilbur for Senator," said Margaret. "If they knew, if he knew, Wilbur would not run. He has always had ambition. I should kill it."

"You will not kill it," said Alice. "Here, give me that suit-case, I will set it inside the gate here. Now Annie and I will walk with you and you must steal in and not wake anybody and go to bed and to sleep."

"To sleep," repeated Margaret bitterly.

"Then not to sleep, but you must go."

The three pa.s.sed down the moon-silvered road. When they had reached Margaret's door, Alice suddenly put an arm around her and kissed her.

"Go in as softly as you can, and to bed," she whispered.

"What made you do that, Alice?" asked Annie in a small voice when the door had closed behind Margaret.

"I think I am beginning to love her," whispered Alice. "Now you know what we must do, Annie?"

"What?"

"We must both watch until dawn, until after that train to New York which stops here at three-thirty. You must stand here and I will go to the other door. Thank G.o.d, there are only two doors, and I don't think she will try the windows because she won't suspect our being here. But I don't trust her, poor thing. She is desperate. You stay here, Annie. Sit down close to the door and--you won't be afraid?"

"Oh, no!"