And this sentiment of hatred itself, independent of and apart from its object, was distasteful and foreign to her. Never in her life had Lloyd hated any one before. To be kind, to be gentle, to be womanly was her second nature, and kindness, gentleness, and womanliness were qualities that her profession only intensified and deepened. This newcomer in her heart, this fierce, evil visitor, that goaded her and pricked and harried her from day to day and throughout so many waking nights, that roused the unwonted flash in her eye and drove the hot, angry blood to her smooth, white forehead and knotted her levelled brows to a dark and lowering frown, had entered her life and being, unsought for and undesired. It did not belong to her world. Yet there it sat on its usurped throne deformed and hideous, driving out all tenderness and compunction, ruling her with a rod of iron, hardening her, embittering her, and belittling her, making a mockery of all sweetness, fleering at nobility and magnanimity, lowering the queen to the level of the fishwife. When the first shock of the catastrophe had spent its strength and Lloyd perforce must turn again to the life she had to live, groping for its scattered, tangled ends, piecing together again as best she might its broken fragments, she set herself honestly to drive this hatred from her heart. If she could not love Bennett, at least she need not hate him. She was moved to this by no feeling of concern for Bennett. It was not a consideration that she owed to him, but something rather that was due to herself. Yet, try as she would, the hatred still remained. She could not put it from her. Hurt her and contaminate her as it did, in spite of all her best efforts, in spite of her very prayers, the evil thing abode with her, deep-rooted, strong, malignant. She saw that in the end she would continue in her profession, but she believed that she could not go on with it consistently, based as it was upon sympathy and love and kindness, while a firm-seated, active hatred dwelt with her, harassing her at every moment, and perverting each good impulse and each unselfish desire. It was an ally of the very Enemy she would be called upon to fight, a traitor that at any moment might open the gates to his triumphant entry. But was this his only ally; was this the only false and ugly invader that had taken advantage of her shattered defence? Had the unwelcome visitor entered her heart alone? Was there not a companion still more wicked, more perverted, more insidious, more dangerous? For the first time Lloyd knew what it meant to deceive.