Electra was looking at her in that removed, patient way that made another woman of her. It was almost like a mother who has cares to think of and can spare no time from them for alien presences. "I must go," she said again. "He would wish it." Rose now had her moment of delay. Her mind went back over that weary road, to the past the present had so illumined for her. It tired her to think the trouble ever attendant on her father's life was to go on, ripple after ripple, now that he had sunken into the mystery of things. Once over the horror of his death, there had been a throb of thankfulness that at least an end had been made to his great power of bringing pain. And now here was another life to be thrown into the void after him, another woman to love a dream. She awoke from that momentary musing, to hear Electra saying,-- "You will excuse me, if I go on working? I sail so soon, and I must leave everything in order." "Electra," said Rose. Then she called her name again, as if appealing to the softest of her moods. "How can I tell you! Electra, you mustn't love my father." Again that swift smile came to Electra's face. The face itself was all a burning truth. The old crude precision in her seemed suddenly to have flowered into this warm candor that spoke and liked to hear itself disclosing, regardless of its auditor. "You cannot"--she looked at Rose with happy inspiration, as if she had been the first to make the saying--"you can't kill love with reason." Again Rose deliberated. When she spoke it was with an air of sad decisiveness. "Electra," she said wistfully, "did he ask you to marry him?" "I never thought of it," said Electra at once, in the simplest unreserve. "It would have seemed too small, to limit it and bound it." "Yes. That is what he would have said, too small. You were a quick pupil." Electra glowed. "I know what he would have said, if he had had time. He did not need to tell me." Rose sat wondering what argument would move her. "Electra," she ventured, "have you had any curiosity about my father's relations to other people?" "He had no time to tell me," said Electra, with a proud dignity. "No, he would not have told you. He never confused his relations. Did you know he was adored by women?" Electra's face flamed. She made no answer. If she could have set forth adequately what was in her tumultuous thoughts, she would have told Rose that nothing seemed so entirely her own as her part in Markham MacLeod's life. She had no curiosity over his past, no doubt of what her future would have been with him, accepting what he chose to give her, and finding it enough. Rose pursued her into the cloister of her thought. "Do you know, Electra," she was urging, "do you know how women devoted themselves to him?" "They must have devoted themselves to him. I am one of them. I am proud to be." "Ah, but, Electra, to take so much and give nothing!" "How do you dare to say he gave nothing?"