er name the patient's "obsession" even to each other. They had tried
to combat it, to tear her from this place; with no other result, as it
seemed, than to hasten the death-process which was upon her. Gently, but
firmly, she had defied them, and they knew now that she would always
defy them. For a year past, summer and winter, she had lived in this
apartment facing the Falls; her nurses found her very patient under the
incurable disease which had declared itself; Daphne came to stay with
her when arduous engagements allowed, and Madeleine was always grateful
and affectionate. But certain topics, and certain advocacies, had
dropped out of their conversation--not by Daphne's will. There had been
no spoken recantation; only the prophetess prophesied no more; and of
late, especially when Daphne was not there--so Mrs. Floyd had
discovered--a Roman Catholic priest had begun to visit Mrs. Verrier.
Daphne, moreover, had recently noticed a small crucifix, hidden among
the folds of the loose black dress which Madeleine commonly wore.

* * * * *

Daphne had changed her dress and dismissed her maid. Although it was
May, a wood-fire had been lighted in her room to counteract the chilly
damp of the evening. She hung over it, loth to go back to the
sitting-room, and plagued by a depression that not even her strong will
could immediately shake off. She wished the Boysons had not come. She
supposed that Alfred Boyson would hardly cut her; but she was tolerably
certain that he would not wish his young wife to become acquainted with
her. She scorned his disapproval of her; but she smarted under it. It
combined with Madeleine's strange delusions to put her on the defensive;
to call out all the fierceness of her pride; to make her feel herself
the champion of a sound and reasonable view of life as against weakness
and reaction.

Madeleine's dumb remorse was, indeed, the most paralyzing and baffling
thing; nothing seemed to be of any avail against it, now that it had
finally gained the upper hand. There had been dark times, no doubt, in
the old days in Washington; times when the tragedy of her husband's
death had overshadowed her. But in the intervals, what courage and
boldness, what ardour in the declaration of that new Feminist gospel to
which Daphne had in her own case borne witness! Daphne remembered well
with what feverish readiness Madeleine had accepted her own pleas after
her flight from England; how