n. Every time you saw her, you admired her more.
You have told me about it, so often. In a feminine way you fell in
love with her yourself, Teresa. You _ought_ to understand."

"He was engaged to me!" echoed Teresa obstinately. Suddenly her face
quivered with pathos "And--I'm young--I'm pretty.--I loved him. _Why_?
Why? Why?"

"Oh, my poor child!" Grizel cried sharply, and the tears started to her
eyes. Poor, ignorant, complaisant Teresa fighting against the mysteries
of life, demanding explanation of the inexplicable,--what tenderness,
what forgiveness was to be expected from such an attitude?

"He chose me," she insisted. "It was his own doing. Nobody made him.
It was his own choice. And he had met her _before_ he asked me. We
used to talk about her together.--I was glad when he was enthusiastic...
She was my friend, and a married woman with a husband and--that big
boy! He is ten years old. She must be thirty at the least." All the
arrogance of the early twenties rang in Teresa's voice. "It's such
folly--such madness! It isn't as if she could ever--love him back."

Silence. Teresa looked up sharply, held Grizel's eyes in a hard,
enquiring stare and deliberately repeated the pronouncement.

"It isn't possible that she could care for him."

"Did you find it so difficult, Teresa?"

"Why do you compare her with me? It's different. You know it's
different."

"Yes, I do know. You were a free, happy girl with your life ahead.
_Her_ youth, the best part of her youth has gone, and she has never had
the joy that every woman needs. You know what I mean. We need not go
into it. Some men mean well, but they have no right to be husbands!
The women who have to live with them are slowly starved to death."

"She has her boy."

"Yes, she has her boy. For a few weeks in the year."

"He is her son all the year round."

"That's perfectly true, Teresa."

"A married woman with a son ought _not_ to love another man."

"That's perfectly true, Teresa. Do you never by any chance do anything
you should not? Can't you find the least scrap of pity in your heart
for other people who are more unhappy than yourself?"

"I am not sorry for people who do wrong. It's easy to talk, Mrs
Beverley. Suppose it was your own husband, and you had seen him, as I
did to-day, with another woman--with Cassandra herself. How would _you_
feel?"

Grizel's grimace was more expressive than words.

"My dear, I can't imagi