ver her own face, for Milly jumped up, eagerly,
too eagerly, and pulled a chair back for her and said; "Sit down,
dearest. Dick is telling me adventures."

What was it that drove into Christina's heart like a knife? Milly smiled
at her, eagerly smiled; and yet she was miles and miles away; had she
been in the jungles of Africa with her husband she could not have been
further; and she was greeting her as though she were a guest, greeting
her with conventional warmth and courteous sweetness. Christina was not
wanted; through the warmth and sweetness she felt that.

Smiling, she said she had come for a book. Going to the book-cases she
sought for one accurately--why she should seek, as though she had come
in with the intention of finding it, a volume of frothy eighteenth
century French memoirs she could not have told--and, smiling again upon
them with unconstrained lightness, she left them. She walked steadily to
her room, locked the door, and, falling upon her knees beside the bed,
broke into an agony of tears.

* * * * *

The end had come; not of Christina's love, not of her need, but of
Milly's. At first her mind refused to face the full realization--groped
among the omens of the past, would not see in Dick, even now, the cause
of all. She could trace the gradual, the dreadful severance; Milly's
slow loss of interest in her and in their life together. It was at first
only for the fact of loss that she wept, that loss, only, she could look
at. But by degrees, as her stifled sobs grew quieter, she was able to
think, to think clearly, fiercely, with desperate snatchings at hope,
while she crouched by the bed; pushing back her hair from her forehead;
pressing her hot temples with icy hands.

Why should Milly lose interest? How could she? How could love and truest
sympathy, truest understanding--how could they fail?

"Love begets love. Love begets love," she whispered under her breath,
not knowing that she spoke, and, in this hour of shipwreck, clinging
unconsciously to such spars and fragments of childish, unreasoning trust
as her memory tossed her. No other friendship threatened hers; she was
first as friend, irrevocably, she knew it. First as friend did not mean
to Milly, could never mean, the deep-dwelling devotion that it meant to
her; but such affinity and attachment as Milly felt could not die
without some other cause than mere weariness. And the truth no longer to
be evaded broke