f the mind which sucks in its own despair,
and with all the concentration of her persuasion, she strove to lift
Sally out of the morass. Failing on that occasion, she turned the
conversation into another channel--let it drift as it pleased; but
the next day she led it back again. At all costs Sally must be removed
from the association of her surroundings, and no means offered better
than these. Yet at the end of three weeks, notwithstanding all the
patient persuasion that she employed, her object was as far from
being reached as at the beginning.

"If you spoil your life, Sally," she said, as she was going, "it'll
be the bitterest disappointment to me that I can think of. No man
is worth it to a woman--no woman's worth it to a man. Can't you get
some ambition to do something? All your time's your own, and you
haven't got to work for your living. He's been generous enough--I'll
admit that. Let me give you lessons in drawing."

"I could never learn anything like that," said Sally, wearily.
"Haven't got it in me."

This mood of wilful depression, bordering upon melancholia, can be
perhaps the most trying test to friendship that exists. To throw life
into the balance of chance--to fling it absolutely away in a moment
of heroism for a friend one loves, is a simple task compared with
the unwearying patience that is needed to face the lightless gloom
of another's misery. It taints all life, discolours all pleasures,
tracks one--dogs one, like a shadow on the wall. Yet Janet passed
the test with love the greater, even at the end of the gauntlet of
those three weeks.

"I'll be with you all day, the day after to-morrow," she said, as
she departed; "and think about teaching the kiddies--I would if I
were you. You'd get awfully fond of them--as if they were your own.
Sons of gentlemen! Think of them! Dear little chaps! My God--the
mothers bore them, though."

CHAPTER III

It should not be lightly touched upon, this heroism of Janet
Hallard's in sacrificing three weeks of her work--every hour of which
meant some living to her--in order to save Sally from that ultimate
dark world of dementia towards which she was inevitably drifting.
It was not the sacrifice of time alone, not the fact that on her return
she was compelled to sell some of her valued possessions in order
to meet the rent of her studio which the work she had left undone
would have amply supplied. Much rather was it the noble perseverance
of effort throu