Helen was grateful, but when they reached the hotel Mrs. Scarsworth (they had exchanged names) insisted on dining at the same table with her, and after the meal, in the little, hideous salon full of low-voiced relatives, took Helen through her “commissions” with biographies of the dead, where she happened to know them, and sketches of their next of kin. Helen endured till nearly half-past nine, ere she fled to her room. Almost at once there was a knock at her door and Mrs. Scarsworth entered; her hands, holding the dreadful list, clasped before her. “Yes--yes--_I_ know,” she began. “You’re sick of me, but I want to tell you something. You--you aren’t married are you? Then perhaps you won’t.... But it doesn’t matter. I’ve _got_ to tell some one. I can’t go on any longer like this.” “But please----” Mrs. Scarsworth had backed against the shut door, and her mouth worked dryly. “In a minute,” she said. “You--you know about these graves of mine I was telling you about downstairs, just now? They really _are_ commissions. At least several of them are.” Her eye wandered round the room. “What extraordinary wall-papers they have in Belgium, don’t you think?... Yes. I swear they are commissions. But there’s _one_, d’you see, and--and he was more to me than anything else in the world. Do you understand?” Helen nodded. “More than any one else. And, of course, he oughtn’t to have been. He ought to have been nothing to me. But he _was_. He _is_. That’s why I do the commissions, you see. That’s all.” “But why do you tell me?” Helen asked desperately. “Because I’m _so_ tired of lying. Tired of lying--always lying--year in and year out. When I don’t tell lies I’ve got to act ’em and I’ve got to think ’em, always. _You_ don’t know what that means. He was everything to me that he oughtn’t to have been--the one real thing--the only thing that ever happened to me in all my life; and I’ve had to pretend he wasn’t. I’ve had to watch every word I said, and think out what lie I’d tell next, for years and years!” “How many years?” Helen asked. “Six years and four months before, and two and three-quarters after. I’ve gone to him eight times, since. To-morrow’ll make the ninth, and--and I can’t--I _can’t_ go to him again with nobody in the world knowing. I want to be honest with some one before I go. Do you understand? It doesn’t matter about _me_. I was never truthful, even as a girl. But it isn’t worthy of _him_. So--so I--I had to tell you. I can’t keep it up any longer. Oh, I can’t!” She lifted her joined hands almost to the level of her mouth, and brought them down sharply, still joined, to full arms’ length below her waist. Helen reached forward, caught them, bowed her head over them, and murmured: “Oh, my dear! My dear!” Mrs. Scarsworth stepped back, her face all mottled. “My God!” said she. “Is _that_ how you take it?” Helen could not speak, the woman went out; but it was a long while before Helen was able to sleep.