ister was there; but, above all, I wanted him to sympathize
with me--and pity me--because he knew everything. And she wasn't
there--and I stayed three days and nights with him. _Voila_!"

There was silence a little. Janet's thoughts were in a tumult. Rachel
began again:

"Now, why am I telling you all this? I need never have told anybody--at
least up to a few days ago. Poor Dick was drowned just before I got my
divorce, in a boat accident on Lake Nipissing. He had gone there to
paint, and was camping out. If he hadn't been drowned, perhaps, he would
have made me marry him. So there was no one in the world who knew I was
ever with him except--"

She turned sharply upon Janet--

"Except this man who turned up here in George's own camp--and in the
village, two months ago, but whom I never saw till this week--_this
week_--Armistice Day--John Dempsey. That was a queer chance, wasn't it?
The sort of thing nobody could have expected. I was coming back from
Millsborough. I was--well, just that evening, I was awfully happy. I
expected nothing. And then--within twenty minutes--"

She told the story to Janet's astounded ears, of the two apparitions in
the road, of her two interviews--first with Dempsey, and the following
evening with Delane--and of her own attempts to bribe them both.

And at that her composure broke down.

"Why did I do it?" she said wildly, springing to her feet. "It was
idiotic! Why didn't I just accept the boy's story, and say quietly, 'Yes,
I was staying with the Tanners'? And why didn't I defy Roger--go straight
to George, and hand him over to the police? Don't you see why? Because it
is true!--_it's true!_--and I'm terrified. If I lost George, I should
kill myself. I never thought I should be--I could be--in love with
anybody like this. But yet I suppose it was in me all the time. I was
always seeking--reaching out--to somebody I could love with every bit of
me, soul and body--somebody I could follow--for I can't manage for
myself--I'm not like you, Janet. And now I've found him--and--Do you know
what that is?"

She pulled a letter out of her pocket, and looked at Janet through a mist
of despairing tears.

"It's a letter from George. It came this morning. He wants me to marry
him at once--next week. He's got some new work in France, and he saw that
I was miserable because he was going away. And why shouldn't I? _Why
shouldn't I?_ I love him. There's nothing wrong with me, except that
wretched sto