ns.

She was ignored--she was a nobody in her own home--everybody knew
it and talked of it. She wasn't jealous--oh no!--she was simply
miserable! 'Oh, I daresay you can no more help it than I can. You,
of course, are twenty times more use here than I am. I don't
dispute that. But I am the daughter of the house after all, and it
is a little hard to be so shelved--so absolutely put in the
background!--as I am--'

'Don't I consult you whenever I can? haven't I done my best to--'
interrupted Elizabeth, only to be interrupted in her turn.

--'to persuade father to let me do things? Yes, that's just
it!--_you_ persuade father, you manage everything. It's just that
that's intolerable!'

And flushed with passion, extraordinarily handsome, Pamela stood
tremulously silent, her eyes fixed on Elizabeth. Elizabeth, too, was
silent for a moment. Then she said with steady emphasis:

'Of course there can only be one end to this. I can't possibly stay
here.'

'Oh, very well, go!' cried Pamela. 'Go, and tell father that I've
made you. But if you do, neither you nor he will see me again for a
good while.'

'What do you mean?'

'What I say. If you suppose that _I'm_ going to stay on here to bear
the brunt of father's temper after he knows that I've made you throw
up, you're entirely mistaken.'

'Then what do you propose?'

'I don't know what I propose,' said Pamela, shaking from head to
foot, 'but if you say a word to father about it I shall simply
disappear. I shall be able to earn my own living somehow.'

The two confronted each other.

'And you really think I can go on after this as if nothing had
happened?' said Elizabeth, in a low voice.

Pangs of remorse were seizing on Pamela, but she stifled them.

'There's a way out!' she said presently, her colour coming and
going. 'I'll go and stay with Margaret in town for a bit. Why should
there be any fuss? She's asked me often to help with her
war-workroom and the canteen. Father won't mind. He doesn't care in
the least what I do! And nobody will think it a bit odd--if you and
I don't talk.'

Elizabeth turned away. The touch of scorn in her bearing was not
lost on Pamela.

'And if I refuse to stay on, without saying or doing anything--to
put myself right--you threaten to run away?'

'I do--I mean it,' said Pamela firmly. She had not only hardened
again under the sting of that contempt she detected in Elizabeth,
but there was rising up in her a sudden and rapturous vi