And yet these were not the words she would have spoken. We are actors often and often when we least suspect ourselves, even when Calamity with one swift stroke of the scalpel has divided the palpitating flesh and quivering nerves down to the living bone. "I would have given my life!" she wept, and Lynette seated by the bedside and bending over her, answered tenderly: "I know it, my kind heart! You have always loved him. You wished him not to go—you begged Owen not to allow——" There was unutterable loyalty in the breaking of the sentence: "He thought it best. I trust my husband," said the sweet voice. "But yet I thank you, dear one, for your loyalty to me." "Don’t touch me! I’m not fit!" Patrine stammered, resisting the mothering, encircling embrace. But the cup of pure sweetness was held to her feverish lips, she craved it too much to thrust it from her. You can see her coming out of the bed in a galumphing outburst of passionate, remorseful tenderness: "Here is my place!—here!" she gulped out brokenly, hiding her wet face on the elder woman’s knees. Together they made a group not unlike Bouguerau’s great canvas of the Consolatrix, save that there was no dead, lovely boy lying amidst the scattered petals of the fallen roses on the stone. Perhaps if there had been and the worst known, Bawne Saxham’s mother could hardly have suffered more. Not to understand ... not to be sure. To be bereaved, and never to know just how the Beloved was taken from you.... Can there be anything more fantastically horrible than this, the fate of thousands of sorrowing women since the beginning of the Great War? It was Sunday morning, brilliant and hot even for July weather. The clangour of church-bells mingled with the clashing of milk-cans, and the scent of pot-roses mingled with the hot smell of London in midsummer. Lynette shivered in spite of the sultriness, and looked down at the girl, spilt out at her knees under the meretricious splendour of her dead beech-leaf hair. She did not—how could she?—fathom the secret of such wretchedness, but love and pity flooded her heart, thawed out of its frozen misery by the vital warmth of the contact. She drew the unresisting arms upwards and about her, and lifted the prone head and took it to her bosom, saying: "My poor girl! My dear Patrine!" They were silent awhile. Then Lynette asked, her soft breath stirring the heavy tresses: "Why did you do this, dearest? Wasn’t it sufficiently beautiful?" Patrine choked out, blazing crimson to the tips of her little ears: "No! At least!—It is hideous now and he hated it! I—I had to tell him," a sob and a laugh tangled together, "it was the effect of Paris air!" Lynette smiled, though the golden eyes were running over: "Bawne thinks so much of you, always!" "I don’t deserve that any one should!" "Nobody shall speak ill before me of any one I care for! Why did you start?"