"But I loved him so! Oh, I thought, maybe, I would be--like other people, if I had him." After a while, with long pauses between the sentences, she began to tell him. ... "I never thought about goodness; or badness either. Only about Lloyd, and happiness. I thought I had a right to happiness. But I was angry at all the complacent married people; they were so satisfied with themselves! And yet all the time I wished Frederick would die so that I could be married. Oh, the time was _so_ long!" She threw her arms up with a gesture of shuddering weariness; then clasped her hands between her knees, and staring at the floor, began to speak. Her words poured out, incoherent, contradictory, full of bewilderment and pain. "Yes; I wasn't very happy, except just at first. After a while I got so tired of Lloyd's selfishness. Oh--he was so selfish! I used to look at him sometimes, and almost hate him. He always took the most comfortable chair, and he cared so much about things to eat. And he got fat. And he didn't mind Frederick's living. I could see that. And I prayed that Frederick would die.--I suppose you think it was wicked to pray that?" "Go on." "It was only because I loved Lloyd so much. But he didn't die. And I began not to be happy. And then I thought Lloyd didn't want to talk to me about Alice. Alice is his daughter. It was three years ago I first noticed that. But I wasn't really sure until this summer. He didn't even like to show me her picture. That nearly killed me, Dr. Lavendar. And once, just lately, he told me her 'greatest charm was her innocence.' Oh, it was cruel in him to say that! How could he be so cruel!" she looked at him for sympathy; but he was silent. "But underneath, somehow, I understood; and that made me angry,--to understand. It was this summer that I began to be angry. And then I got so jealous: not of Alice, exactly; but of what she stood for. It was a kind of fright, because I couldn't go back and begin again. Do you know what I mean?" "I know." "Oh, Dr. Lavendar, it is so horrible! When I began to understand, it seemed like something broken--broken--broken! It could never be mended." "No." ...Sometimes, as she went on he asked a question, and sometimes made a comment. The comment was always the same: when she spoke of marrying Frederick to get away from her bleak life with her grandmother, she said, "Oh, it was a mistake, a mistake!" And he said, "It was a sin." And again: "I thought Lloyd would make me happy; I just went to be happy; that was my second mistake." "It was your second sin." "You think I am a sinner," she said; "oh, Dr. Lavendar, I am not as bad as you think! I always expected to marry Lloyd. I am not like a--fallen woman." "Why not?" said Dr. Lavendar. She shrank back with a gesture of dismay. "I always expected to marry him!" "It would have been just the same if you had married him." "I don't understand you," she said faintly.