bound to be
vilely uncomfortable."

For some time Rachel made no reply; but every sentence Helen spoke
increased her bitterness. At last she broke out--

"Thank God, Helen, I'm not like you! I sometimes think you don't think
or feel or care to do anything but exist! You're like Mr. Hirst. You see
that things are bad, and you pride yourself on saying so. It's what
you call being honest; as a matter of fact it's being lazy, being dull,
being nothing. You don't help; you put an end to things."

Helen smiled as if she rather enjoyed the attack.

"Well?" she enquired.

"It seems to me bad--that's all," Rachel replied.

"Quite likely," said Helen.

At any other time Rachel would probably have been silenced by her Aunt's
candour; but this afternoon she was not in the mood to be silenced by
any one. A quarrel would be welcome.

"You're only half alive," she continued.

"Is that because I didn't accept Mr. Flushing's invitation?" Helen
asked, "or do you always think that?"

At the moment it appeared to Rachel that she had always seen the same
faults in Helen, from the very first night on board the _Euphrosyne_, in
spite of her beauty, in spite of her magnanimity and their love.

"Oh, it's only what's the matter with every one!" she exclaimed. "No
one feels--no one does anything but hurt. I tell you, Helen, the world's
bad. It's an agony, living, wanting--"

Here she tore a handful of leaves from a bush and crushed them to
control herself.

"The lives of these people," she tried to explain, the aimlessness, the
way they live. "One goes from one to another, and it's all the same. One
never gets what one wants out of any of them."

Her emotional state and her confusion would have made her an easy prey
if Helen had wished to argue or had wished to draw confidences. But
instead of talking she fell into a profound silence as they walked on.
Aimless, trivial, meaningless, oh no--what she had seen at tea made it
impossible for her to believe that. The little jokes, the chatter, the
inanities of the afternoon had shrivelled up before her eyes. Underneath
the likings and spites, the comings together and partings, great things
were happening--terrible things, because they were so great. Her sense
of safety was shaken, as if beneath twigs and dead leaves she had seen
the movement of a snake. It seemed to her that a moment's respite
was allowed, a moment's make-believe, and then again the profound and
reasonless law assert