"If," said Margaret, stammering as she spoke, "I tell Wilbur, I think it will kill him. If I tell the children, they will never really have a mother again. They will never forget. But if I do not tell, I shall not have myself. It is a horrible thing not to have yourself, Alice Mendon." "It is the only way." "It is easy for you to talk, Alice Mendon. You have never been tempted." "No," replied Alice, "that is quite true. I have never been tempted because--I cannot be tempted." "It is no credit to you. You were made so." "Yes, that is true also. I was made so. It is no credit to me." Margaret tried to wrench her arm free from Annie's grasp. "Let me go, Annie Eustace," she said. "I hate you." "I don't care if you do," replied Annie. "I don't love you any more myself. I don't hate you, but I certainly don't love you." "I stole your laurels," said Margaret, and she seemed to snap out the words. "You could have had the laurels," said Annie, "without stealing, if I could have given them to you. It is not the laurels that matter. It is you." "I will kill myself if it ever is known," said Margaret in a low horrified whisper. She cowered. "It will never be known unless you yourself tell it," said Annie. "I cannot tell," said Margaret. "I have thought it all over. I cannot tell and yet, how can I live and not tell?" "I suppose," said Alice Mendon, "that always when people do wrong, they have to endure punishment. I suppose that is your punishment, Margaret. You have always loved yourself and now you will have to despise yourself. I don't see any way out of it." "I am not the only woman who does such things," said Margaret, and there was defiance in her tone. "No doubt, you have company," said Alice. "That does not make it easier for you." Alice, large and fair in her white draperies, towered over Margaret Edes like an embodied conscience. She was almost unendurable, like the ideal of which the other woman had fallen short. Her mere presence was maddening. Margaret actually grimaced at her. "It is easy for you to preach," said she, "very easy, Alice Mendon. You have not a nerve in your whole body. You have not an ungratified ambition. You neither love nor hate yourself, or other people. You want nothing on earth enough to make the lack of it disturb you." "How well you read me," said Alice and she smiled a large calm smile as a statue might smile, could she relax her beautiful marble mouth. "And as for Annie Eustace," said Margaret, "she has what I stole, and she knows it, and that is enough for her. Oh, both of you look down upon me and I know it." "I look down upon you no more than I have always done," said Alice; but Annie was silent because she could not say that truly. "Yes, I know you have always looked down upon me, Alice Mendon," said Margaret, "and you never had reason." "I had the reason," said Alice, "that your own deeds have proved true."