what
I like. But"--she tried her best to gulp back her pain, her outraged
feeling, to speak quietly--"I am not like that really any more. I can
take it all up, with courage and heart, if you will stay with me, and
let me--let me--love you and care for you. But, by myself, I feel as if
I could not face it! I am not likely to be happy--for a long
time--except in doing what work I can. It is very improbable that I
shall marry. I dare say you don't believe me, but it is true. We are
both sad and lonely. We have no one but each other. And then you talk in
this ghastly way of separating from me--casting me off."

Her voice trembled and broke, she looked at her mother with a frowning
passion.

Mrs. Boyce still sat silent, studying her daughter with a strange,
brooding eye. Under her unnatural composure there was in reality a
half-mad impatience, the result of physical and moral reaction. This
beauty, this youth, talk of sadness, of finality! What folly! Still, she
was stirred, undermined in spite of herself.

"There!" she said, with a restless gesture, "let us, please, talk of it
no more. I will come back with you--I will do my best. We will let the
matter of my future settlement alone for some months, at any rate, if
that will satisfy you or be any help to you."

She made a movement as though to rise from her low chair. But the great
waters swelled in Marcella--swelled and broke. She fell on her knees
again by her mother, and before Mrs. Boyce could stop her she had thrown
her young arms close round the thin, shrunken form.

"Mother!" she said. "Mother, be good to me--love me--you are all I
have!"

And she kissed the pale brow and cheek with a hungry, almost a violent
tenderness that would not be gainsaid, murmuring wild incoherent things.

Mrs. Boyce first tried to put her away, then submitted, being physically
unable to resist, and at last escaped from her with a sudden sob that
went to the girl's heart. She rose, went to the window, struggled hard
for composure, and finally left the room.

But that evening, for the first time, she let Marcella put her on the
sofa, tend her, and read to her. More wonderful still, she went to sleep
while Marcella was reading. In the lamplight her face looked piteously
old and worn. The girl sat for long with her hands clasped round her
knees, gazing down upon it, in a trance of pain and longing.

* * * * *

Marcella was awake early next morning, li