"You have not spared me," Nora went on recklessly. "I shall not spare you. That night when you were delirious I learnt of your whole love for Wolff and all that you suffered. I also loved him—I also suffered, and I distrusted my own strength. I tried to raise a barrier between myself and him, so—so that we could never come together. I thought if I could say to him ’I belong to another,’ that I should save you from heart-break and myself from a mean, ungrateful act. But the barrier was not high enough or strong enough to shield me from my own weakness. Believe me or not, as you will—that is the truth. In all my life I have loved only one man—my husband." There was a moment’s silence. Hildegarde sat stiff and upright, her lips firmly compressed, her expression unchanged. But her voice betrayed the rising of a new emotion. "I must believe what you have told me," she said. "In that case, what you did was pardonable—even generous. But that is not all. That was not what made me hate you. I hate you because you have ruined Wolff’s life. For the first month or two you made him happy because you were happy yourself. Then I suppose you tired of it all—of the poverty and the restrictions and the sacrifices. It did not satisfy your grand English tastes to go poorly dressed and live in small, ill-furnished flats. It was beneath your dignity to see to your husband’s dinner; it did not suit you to sit at home alone and wait for him, much less to make his friends your friends and join in their life. Though they were honourable, good people, who brought their sacrifices uncomplainingly, they were beneath you. You despised them because they could not afford to live as you considered necessary, because they cooked their husbands’ supper and wore old clothes so that he might go into the world and represent his name and his profession worthily. You hated them——" "Not till they hated me!" Nora broke in, with a movement of passionate protest. "They did not hate you—I know that. They welcomed you as a sister and a comrade, until you showed that you would have none of them—until they saw that you despised their ways and their ideals. Yes; they have ideals, those poor dowdy women whom you looked down upon, and their first and highest ideal is their Duty. Mark this! They bore with you and your contempt and English arrogance until you insulted that ideal. They bore with you as a comrade until you proved yourself unworthy of their comradeship, until you brought disgrace upon your husband’s name and profession with your profligate brother and your lover——" "Hildegarde—how dare you!" "I dare because it is the truth." Both women had risen and faced each other. And yet in that supreme moment of bitterness, something between them—their hatred and distrust—yielded. Accuser and accused read in each other’s eyes a misery too great for hatred.