Grizel sighed. She knew better than to advance the reality of her own affection at that moment, for the truest friendship on earth can never feel the gap left by love. There was only one person on earth who in any fashion could console Cassandra for Peignton's loss, and he was the one for whom she was making her sacrifice. The glimpse she had had of Bernard junior during an exeat spent at home, was not inspiring, but Grizel's indomitable optimism surmounted all difficulties. "The boy will love you, darling," she said softly. "That will come! He is getting to the age when he will appreciate your beauty, and that means so much. He will begin by being proud of you, and the rest will follow. And he will mean more to you after this. When you have sacrificed so much for a person, he becomes more precious... You'll grow together. I know it, I feel it! In a few years' time he will be your devoted companion. I'm going to have a son like that myself some day, but I shan't have the right to him that you have. I shan't have paid such a big price!" The tears welled slowly into Cassandra's eyes. She turned her head aside, and sat gazing into the mist of green which formed the outer world. A son's love would be sweet, but it was at present merely a possibility, while Dane's love was real, and near, and strong. And other women had both! Blessed women on whom husbands and sons waited with rival devotion. The bitter problem of inequality, old as the earth itself, tore at Cassandra's heart, demanding why she should starve, while others sat at a feast; why the narrow path should sometimes be strewn with flowers, and again with jagged stones. She fought it out in her mind while Grizel sat waiting, but to-day she had no power to find comfort for herself. Body and mind alike were spent and weary. She was thankful to feel the presence of a friend... "Are you one of the people, Grizel, who preach that all lots in life are equally good?" "I should hope not. I have some common sense." "Oh, it's not a question of common sense; it's a question of faith. Mrs Evans would say they were. She says every heart knows its own bitterness, that people may appear very fortunate, but one can never tell that there is not a skeleton locked away. And if other people are terribly poor, or chronic invalids, or anything desperate like that, she says that they have a temperament that makes up, or that we can only see the present, and not life as a whole..." "I've known,--by sight and hearsay,--many whole lives, and they've been a martyrdom, nearly all the way through. I've known others, in the same way, which were nearly all sunshine. Rainstorms, of course, and an occasional squall, but never, never the whirlwind or the lightning. Life is _not_ evened out; it's folly to pretend it. It's fifty times harder for some than for others." "But why? Why? It doesn't seem fair. It's _not_ always their own fault?"