"Then her companion there's perfectly competent to give her one. Don't think I've the least desire to push them into each other's arms--I only ask to wash my hands of them. But I should like to know why you want, as you said just now, to save him. When you speak as if your daughter were a monster I take it you're not serious." She was facing me in the rich short twilight, and to describe herself as immeasurably more serious perhaps than she had ever been in her life she had only to look at me without protestation. "It's Linda's standard. God knows I myself could get on! She's ambitious, luxurious, determined to have what she wants--more 'on the make' than any one I've ever seen. Of course it's open to you to tell me it's my own fault, that I was so before her and have made her so. But does that make me like it any better?" "Dear Mrs. Pallant, you're wonderful, you're terrible," I could only stammer, lost in the desert of my thoughts. "Oh yes, you've made up your mind about me; you see me in a certain way and don't like the trouble of changing. Votre siege est fait. But you'll HAVE to change--if you've any generosity!" Her eyes shone in the summer dusk and the beauty of her youth came back to her. "Is this a part of the reparation, of the expiation?" I demanded. "I don't see what you ever did to Archie." "It's enough that he belongs to you. But it isn't for you I do it--it's for myself," she strangely went on. "Doubtless you've your own reasons--which I can't penetrate. But can't you sacrifice something else? Must you sacrifice your only child?" "My only child's my punishment, my only child's my stigma!" she cried in her exaltation. "It seems to me rather that you're hers." "Hers? What does SHE know of such things?--what can she ever feel? She's cased in steel; she has a heart of marble. It's true--it's true," said Louisa Pallant. "She appals me!" I laid my hand on my poor friend's; I uttered, with the intention of checking and soothing her, the first incoherent words that came into my head and I drew her toward a bench a few steps away. She dropped upon it; I placed myself near her and besought her to consider well what she said. She owed me nothing and I wished no one injured, no one denounced or exposed for my sake.