the sake of--of I don't know
what--the pleasure I had in knowing her, I suppose."

"It seems to me pretty clear, from this precious
communication, that she was quietly reciprocating," Kendal
said bluntly.

"That doesn't clear me in the least. Besides, when she
had made up her mind she had the courage to tell me what
she thought; there was some principle in that. I--I admire
her for doing it, but I couldn't, myself."

"Thank the Lord, no. And I wouldn't be too sure, if I
were you, darling, about the unmixed heroism that dictates
her letter. I dare say she fancied it was that, but--"

Janet's head leaped up from his shoulder. "Now you are
unjust to her," she cried. "You don't know Elfrida, Jack.
If you think her capable of assuming a motive--"

"Well, do you know what I think?" said Kendal, with an
irrelevant smile, glancing at the letter in her hand. "I
think she has kept a copy."

Janet looked at him with reproachful eyes, which
nevertheless had the relief of amusement in them. "Don't
you?" he insisted.

"I--dare say."

"And she thoroughly enjoyed writing as she did. The
phrases read as if she had rolled them under her tongue.
It was a _coup_, don't you see?--and the making of a
_coup_, of any kind, at any expense, is the most refined
joy which life affords that young woman."

"There's sincerity in every line."

"Oh, she means what she says. But she found an exquisite
gratification in saying it which you cannot comprehend,
dear. This letter is a flower of her egotism, as it
were--she regards it with natural ecstasy, as an
achievement."

Janet shook her head. "Oh no, no" she cried miserably.
"You can't realize the--the sort of thing there was
between us, dear, and how it should have been sacred to
me beyond all tampering and cavilling, or it should not
have been at all. It isn't that I didn't know all the
time that I was disloyal to her, while she thought I was
sincerely her friend. I did! And now she has found me
out, and it serves me perfectly right--perfectly."

Kendal reflected for a moment, and then he brought comfort
to her from his last resource.

"Of course the intimacy between two girls is a wholly
different thing, and I don't know whether the relation
between Miss Bell and myself affords any parallel to
it--"

"Oh, Jack! And I thought--"

"What did you think, dearest?"

"I thought," said Janet, in a voice considerably muffled
by contact with his tweed coat collar, "that you were
pe