t true!"

"It has been true for me, Charlotte."

"It needn't be now. While Eric was a baby, it may have been true for
you, but there's no reason in the world why it should be now."

"Well, it _is_ true for me now--it will be true for me always. And
yet----"

And then, because disillusion and bitterness were strong upon Sheila,
Charlotte got the whole story out of her, from the first revelation of
Ted's attitude toward a married woman's art to the final climax of
Eric's illness, her self-blame and her renunciation of her work. Even
while she told it, she knew that she would reproach herself afterward
for disloyalty to Ted, but the sheer relief of confiding it to a
sympathetic listener was too much for her scruples.

"I never heard of anything so outrageous in my life!" exclaimed
Charlotte, when the story was ended. "It's barbarous--_barbarous_!"

Not a word of her final clear vision of her husband, her belated
disappointment in him, had Sheila uttered. For that at least she had
been too loyal. But already she repented having betrayed his views in
regard to the married woman-artist. So well she knew what Charlotte
must think of them, indeed, that she now felt impelled to a defense:

"Of course it hasn't been Ted's fault--you mustn't feel that he's to
blame."

"Mustn't I?" asked Charlotte drily. And then, "My dear girl, he _has_
been to blame--absolutely, unforgivably to blame. It makes me wild to
think of his narrow-minded, pig-headed selfishness. And that you
should have given in to it--! Oh, Sheila, Sheila, where is your
independence, your sense of your rights as an individual, a human
being? Are you a cave woman--that you should be just your husband's
docile chattel?" And Charlotte sprang from her chair and began to pace
the veranda, urged by the fierce energy of her anger.

"I said it had been Ted's fault--this spoiling of your life," she went
on presently, "but it's been your fault, too, Sheila. It's been your
fault for giving in to him."

"But," pleaded Sheila, "I didn't give in to _Ted_. I gave in to
circumstances. Seeing that Eric was ill--that he might die--because
I'd neglected him in order to write was what conquered me. That was
what drove me to the vow to renounce my work--if Eric was spared."

Charlotte came and stood before her then: "Sheila, you know as well as
I do that you'd never have made that vow if the sense of Ted's
disapproval, his condemnation, hadn't been working on