stay with me."

"Could I?" Madam Fulton lifted her tear-wet face. "If I could stay here
a little while, maybe I might pull myself together. I don't know how to
do it, Bessie. I don't know how to live. I never did."

Rose had run over to the other house in an unreasoning haste. Electra
was in the library, putting her desk in order. Her firm white hands were
busy, assorting and arranging. She turned her head as Rose came in, and,
without rising, spoke to her collectedly and bade her be seated. She was
older, Rose thought; she looked even like a different woman, not merely
one whom middle age had overtaken. Purpose sat on her brow, and her eyes
looked straight at you, as if she bade you tell your business and be
gone. The one effect upon Rose was to make her sorry, infinitely sorry
for her. Electra had broken the globe of her hopes upon a rock, and she
was not even going to walk on and leave the shards forgotten there. Rose
spoke at once, to use her courage while she felt it hot.

"Madam Fulton tells me you are going abroad."

"Yes. I sail next week."

"Is it with any purpose? Electra, did my father make you love him?"

Electra faced her. Color flowed into her cheeks. Her eyes glowed beyond
any promise they had ever given.

"I am glad you ask me that," she said, and her full tone was strangely
unlike the even consonance of the old Electra's voice. At last she
forgot how she did things or why. Life was sweeping her along. "He never
made me love him. It was ordained. It was like nothing else on earth."

Rose felt cold with the sad knowledge of it.

"Yes," she said, "he had great power over people."

A smile stole upon Electra's lips.

"We had planned it all," she said. "I was to go to Paris. I was to work
with him. Now that he is gone, I must carry on the work for both of us."

Rose regarded her with a wistful compassion, not knowing how much she
might help her, and yet wishing to offer all she had.

"Electra," she said, "what do you mean by carrying on the work?"

"His work, the Brotherhood."

"But, dear child, you would have to submit yourself for years and years
to all sorts of tests before you would be trusted. I don't even know
whether it won't fall apart, now he has gone. It may do that and
reorganize in a different form. And how would you find it? You think of
it as a definite body with headquarters anybody can reach. Why, Electra,
you might stay a dozen years in Paris and not put your finger on it."