er than dispute
about a trifle.

"The postscript? Let me see...'Don't let my wife ride Impulse.'--_Et
puis?_" she murmured, dropping the page again.

"Well, does it tell you nothing? It's a cold letter--at first I thought
so--the letter of a man who believes himself deeply hurt--so deeply that
he will make no advance, no sign of relenting. That's what I thought
when I first read it...but the postscript undoes it all."

Justine, as she spoke, had drawn near Bessy, laying a hand on her arm,
and shedding on her the radiance of a face all charity and sweet
compassion. It was her rare gift, at such moments, to forget her own
relation to the person for whose fate she was concerned, to cast aside
all consciousness of criticism and distrust in the heart she strove to
reach, as pitiful people forget their physical timidity in the attempt
to help a wounded animal.

For a moment Bessy seemed to waver. The colour flickered faintly up her
cheek, her long lashes drooped--she had the tenderest lids!--and all her
face seemed melting under the beams of Justine's ardour. But the letter
was still in her hand--her eyes, in sinking, fell upon it, and she
sounded beneath her breath the fatal phrase: "'I have done this solely
because you asked it.'

"After such a tribute to your influence I don't wonder you feel
competent to set everybody's affairs in order! But take my advice, my
dear--_don't_ ask me not to ride Impulse!"

The pity froze on Justine's lip: she shrank back cut to the quick. For a
moment the silence between the two women rang with the flight of arrowy,
wounding thoughts; then Bessy's anger flagged, she gave one of her
embarrassed half-laughs, and turning back, laid a deprecating touch on
her friend's arm.

"I didn't mean that, Justine...but let us not talk now--I can't!"

Justine did not move: the reaction could not come as quickly in her
case. But she turned on Bessy two eyes full of pardon, full of
speechless pity...and Bessy received the look silently before she moved
to the door and went out.

"Oh, poor thing--poor thing!" Justine gasped as the door closed.

She had already forgotten her own hurt--she was alone again with Bessy's
sterile pain. She stood staring before her for a moment--then her eyes
fell on Amherst's letter, which had fluttered to the floor between them.
The fatal letter! If it had not come at that unlucky moment perhaps she
might still have gained her end.... She picked it up and re-read it.
Y