“And to-day?” asked Cecily. “You came back to-day to see him?” “Yes. Of course I had no idea you were here.... I thought I might--he might....” She laid the latch-key with which she had entered on the table between them. The room was quite still. Cecily scarcely knew how to define her sensations, but relief was one of them--the greatest. She was glad, inexpressibly glad to find her new suspicions of Robert groundless. She started when Philippa sprang with sudden passion to her feet. “Oh!” she cried, “how you despise me, don’t you? But if you’d had my existence----Do you know what life means for a woman who has no money?” she demanded, fiercely. “Do you know what it means to be turned out into the world when your parents die, without influence, without proper training for any work, just to sink or swim as you can? I tell you, you clutch at anything, at anybody.... I shall have to tell you.... I lived with a woman once--and there was some money--I”--she moistened her dry lips--“I had the handling of her--money, and I--I meant to return it, of course. But she found out before I had time. She was hard--as hard as nails. She gave me a certain time to pay it back, and if I didn’t she threatened to make it public. Well--I borrowed it--I had to--from a man.” Again she suddenly lowered her eyes--and Cecily understood. “It’s he who threatens,” she went on in a choking voice. “It’s not paid back yet--and he’s poor---- Oh, you’ve never met such a man in your world, of course! _You_ don’t know the sort of man who would----It’s the money he wants. And I can’t marry Nigel, because he--this man will go to him, and----” She threw herself on the sofa and hid her face. Cecily drew nearer. Human misery is terrible to witness. She was moved inexpressibly. Philippa’s affectations, her poses, her exasperating mannerisms, had dropped from her, leaving her just a naked, shivering human soul, desperately afraid. “Philippa!” she whispered, bending over her, “if only you had ever, even _once_ before, been sincere with me!” She spoke in a voice trembling with pity, and Philippa looked up. “Go on,” she said. “Don’t be afraid to tell me everything.” Philippa raised her head, pushing her hair away from her haggard eyes. She looked old and beaten and hunted as she sat there. “There’s nothing much to tell,” she said, doggedly. “That’s what I did--and I’ve paid for it. It’s awful to get into a net. I saw your husband was interested in me--at the beginning, I mean. I couldn’t afford to let him go.” The slow color rose to Cecily’s cheek. Chaotic emotions surged within her; among them shame, and a curious despairing pity that after all her husband had never been loved--merely tricked,--deceived. “Poor Robin!” she found herself repeating silently, with a sort of passion of protection, as she returned in thought to the “little” name of their happy days. Philippa was still talking, wildly, incoherently, as though with relief.