"I can say to you," went on the voice of the little figure, that seemed
so to fill the room with its grey presence, "what I could not bring
myself to say to others; for you are not hard-hearted."

A quiver passed up from the heart so praised to the still lips. No, she
was not hard-hearted! She could even feel for this old woman from whose
voice anxiety had stolen its despotism.

"Eustace cannot live without his career. His career is himself, he must
be doing, and leading, and spending his powers. What he has given you is
not his true self. I don't want to hurt you, but the truth is the truth,
and we must all bow before it. I may be hard, but I can respect sorrow."

To respect sorrow! Yes, this grey visitor could do that, as the wind
passing over the sea respects its surface, as the air respects the
surface of a rose, but to penetrate to the heart, to understand her
sorrow, that old age could not do for youth! As well try to track out
the secret of the twistings in the flight of those swallows out there
above the river, or to follow to its source the faint scent of the lilies
in that bowl! How should she know what was passing in here--this little
old woman whose blood was cold? And Audrey had the sensation of watching
someone pelt her with the rind and husks of what her own spirit had long
devoured. She had a longing to get up, and take the hand, the chill,
spidery hand of age, and thrust it into her breast, and say: "Feel that,
and cease!"

But, withal, she never lost her queer dull compassion for the owner of
that white carved face. It was not her visitor's fault that she had
come! Again Lady Casterley was speaking.

"It is early days. If you do not end it now, at once, it will only come
harder on you presently. You know how determined he is. He will not
change his mind. If you cut him off from his work in life, it will but
recoil on you. I can only expect your hatred, for talking like this, but
believe me, it's for your good, as well as his, in the long run."

A tumultuous heart-beating of ironical rage seized on the listener to
that speech. Her good! The good of a corse that the breath is just
abandoning; the good of a flower beneath a heel; the good of an old dog
whose master leaves it for the last time! Slowly a weight like lead
stopped all that fluttering of her heart. If she did not end it at once!
The words had now been spoken that for so many hours, she knew, had lain
unspoken within