“But, my dear child, you are talking wildly,” cried Raine earnestly. “God knows there is nothing to forgive. I knew long ago a shadow had been cast over her life--and I loved her. A strange freak of destiny brought the man here--last night, accidentally, he told me the details--and I loved her. I have not seen her. It is not I who drive her away. Read that, and you can see it is not I.” He thrust the letter into her hand, and watched her as she read. Four-and-twenty hours ago, he would as soon have thought of crying his heart's secrets aloud in the public streets, as of delivering them into the keeping of this young girl. But now it seemed natural. Her exalted mood had infected him, lifted him on to an unconventional plane. The blood rushed to her cheeks as she read the lines in which reference was made to herself. When she had finished, she looked at him with a strange light in her eyes. “And you are satisfied with this?” she said quickly. “I am dumfounded by it. She has promised to marry this man.” “And can't you see why? Isn't it as clear to you as the noonday?” “The old love is stronger, I suppose.” “Raine!” cried the girl, in ringing reproach. “How dare you say that, think it even? Can't you see the agony that letter has cost her? To me it is quivering in every line. Why did you let that man go to her instead of yourself? Oh, heavens! if I were a man, and such a thing had happened regarding the woman I loved, I should have lain outside her door all night to guard her--I should have seen her, if hell-fire had been between us. But you let her suffer. You put your pride above your love, like a man--you were silent. You let her hear from this man that you knew--you left her to grapple with her shame alone.” Felicia walked about the room like a young lioness. The words came in a flood. In the championing of her sister-woman she lost sense of conventional restrictions. Raine was no longer Raine, but the typefication of a sex against which she was battling for her own. “Can't you read into it all?” she continued. “Can't you see the degradation she seemed to have fallen into in your eyes? But you only think of yourself--of _your_ pride--of the bloom brushed off from _your_ ideal. Never a thought for her--of the god hurled from her heaven. She would marry this man to cut herself adrift from you, to get out of your life without further troubling it--to ease your conscience, lest it should ever prick you for having left her. She is marrying him because her heart is broken--who else but a noble, high-souled woman could have written this letter? I better than she! Oh, Raine--if you have a spark of love for her left--go and throw yourself at her knees, before it is too late.” Her voice broke towards the end. The strain was telling on her. She sank for rest upon the chair by the window, and laid her burning cheek against the iron balustrade. Raine came to her side. “You can thrash me a little more, if you like.”