Was it, or was it not, the fact, she asked herself, that now, after all these years, she thought of this woman as worse than her husband, the iniquity of the accomplice as more diabolical than that of the principal? She found she could not answer this in the negative off-hand. The paradox was also before her that that incorrigible amphibious treasure of hers, whose voice was even now shouting to her more timorous friend from beyond the selvage-wave she had just contemptuously dived through--that that Sally, inexchangeable for anything she could conceive or imagine, must needs have been something quite other than she was, had she come of any other technical paternity than the accursed one she had to own to. Was there some terrible law in Nature that slow forgiveness of the greatest wrong that can be wrought must perforce be granted to its inflictor, through the gracious survivor of a brutal indifference that would almost add to his crime, if that were possible? If, so, surely the Universe must be the work of an Almighty Fiend, a Demiurgus with a cruel heart, and this the masterstroke of all his cunning. But what, in Heaven's name, was the use of bruising her brains against the conundrums of the great unanswered metaphysical sphinx? Better be contented with the easy vernacular solution of the rhymester: "Praise God from whom all blessings flow, Evils from circumstances grow." Because she felt she was getting no nearer the solution of her own problem, and was, if anything, wandering from the point. Another way of looking at the matter was beginning to take form: had hung about her mind and forsaken it more than once. Might it not be better, after all, to dash at the position and capture it while her forces were well under control? To pursue the metaphor, the commissariat might not hold out. Better endure the ills we have--of course, Rosalind knew all that--than fly to others that we know not of. But suppose we have a chance of flying to others we can measure the length and breadth of, and staving off thereby an uncalculable unknown? She felt she almost knew the worst that could come of taking Gerry into her confidence, telling him boldly all about himself, provided she could choose her opportunity and make sure Sally was well out of the way. The concealment from Sally was the achievement whose failure involved the greatest risk. Her husband's mind would bear the knowledge of his story well or ill according to the way in which it reached him; but the necessity of keeping her girl in ignorance of it was a thing absolute. Any idea that Sally's origin could be concealed from her, and her stepfather's identity made known, Rosalind dismissed as simply fantastic.