Florence, white, breathing short, looked at the floor. It seemed rising up to strike her. She was overwhelmed that Julia had divined her case—had guessed,—a dozen frantic suppositions flew through her mind. Then the fact flashed on her: the girl had only cried her own tragedy! But how was it hers? How could it be Julia’s, when Longacre had told her—? Florence filled her lungs with a deep, slow-drawn breath, as if she were drawing in courage to face what was rising in her mind. It was Longacre’s face as it had peered up into hers that morning, and his voice restlessly repeating, “I am something no woman could forgive!” Her quickening comprehension embraced what that might be. Longacre had told Julia nothing! She put her hand out behind her, touched the table to steady herself. The passionate gratitude that rose in her at his forlorn loyalty stood still when she raised her eyes to Julia’s face. She knew what the girl was suffering. It was what she herself suffered, but worse, for Julia was blind. Julia could see no way out of it, and Florence herself, for a moment, was nerveless before the enormousness of her own task. Her voice came weakly. “I would be very sure, first, that he did _not_ love me.” The answer seemed her own as well as Julia’s. The girl’s eyes blazed at her. “Don’t _you_ know?” she said. But Florence expected to be stabbed. “Yes, I do,” she answered steadily; “but you must see him yourself.” The girl’s bosom lifted sharply. “Oh, _no!_” she breathed. She stood up. She seemed to tower over the other woman. She seemed to force it home to Florence how impossible it was to find a way out. “Oh, if you knew,” she cried, “you couldn’t ask it! Even _you_ couldn’t wish me such—such humiliation.” “If I knew?” Florence repeated, dreading, shrinking from any further revelation. “What happened,” Julia moaned, turning away. “Would what happened seem any less impossible,” Florence slowly began, “if the man thought himself bound in honor to another woman—” “_Thought!_” Julia cried. “A woman whom he did not love,” Florence kept on; “to whom he was tied by old promises, with whom now there was nothing but an old friendship?” Julia looked at her a little wildly. “I—don’t know what you mean!” “I mean this woman did not—was not in love with him any more. When she knew of—of you, she released him.” “But that was after—” “What happened? Yes.” “Then he didn’t keep faith with her—with either!” Julia cried, still fixing Florence with her white, quivering face. “Because he loved you.” Julia seemed to stand there irrationally, convinced by the sound of Florence Essington’s voice—by just the weight of its own deep, passionate conviction. “Then why couldn’t he have told me?” the girl murmured forlornly. “I would have believed him! Why couldn’t he trust me!”