eak to you, to--to
open my heart to you." Her lips trembled. "Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps I
have no right to be here to say what I am going to say. I told Connie;
she--she knows that I have come here, and she knows why."

"Yes; go on."

"If--if you loved him it would be different. I would not dare think of
saying anything then. I think I would be glad. I could, at any rate, be
reconciled to it, because it would be for his happiness. If you loved
him--but you don't--you don't! He is a man who could not live without
love. It is part of his life. He might think, might believe that he
would be content to take you because you are lovely and--and good and
clever, and all those things that I am not, even though you do not love
him, but the time would come when his heart would ache for the love you
withheld. Oh, Joan--Joan, forgive me--forgive me, but I must speak. I
think you would if you were in my place!"

The cold bitterness was passing slowly from Joan's face. There came a
tinge of colour into her cheeks; her eyes that watched the girl grew
softer and more tender.

"Go on," she said; "go on, tell me!"

"I have nothing more to say."

"Yes, you have--you have much more. You have this to say--you love him
and want him, you wish to take him from me. Is that it, Ellice?"

"If you loved him I would not have dared to come. I would have told
myself that I was content. But you don't. I have watched you--yes, spied
on you--looking for some sign of tenderness that would prove to me that
you loved him; but it never came. And so I know that you are marrying
Johnny Everard with no love, accepting all the great love that he is
offering to you and giving him nothing in exchange. Oh, it is not fair!"

"It is not fair," Joan said; "it is not fair, and yet I thought of that.
I told him just what you have told me, and still he seemed to be
content."

"Because he loves you so, and because he has hope in the future, because
in spite of everything he still hopes that he might win your heart, and
I know that he never can."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I--I think you have already given your heart away."

And now Joan's eyes flamed, the anger came back. "By what right do you
say that? How dared you say that?"

"It is only what I believed. I believed that a woman so sweet, so
beautiful, so good as you, must love. You could not live your life
without love. If it has not come yet, then it will come some day, and
then if you are