"I soon saw what I had done--that I had been false to myself and therefore false to everything else. My husband was in love with me--He was very patient and good to me, but I found that everything that I did or thought or said in connection with my husband was false. What made it so hard was that I was, and I am, very fond of him. My training--the training of all our family had always been--to learn how to be sham, so that one's real self never appeared all one's life. It ought to have been easy enough--but I've never been like one of my family--I'd always been different. "I had determined that this year I would do my duty to Roddy--But it's harder than any determination can govern. It's bad for Roddy, it's deadly for me ... at last things have happened that have made it impossible for me--I've made up my mind this morning. I must leave Roddy, let him divorce me, give him a better chance with someone else." She spoke with the desperate immediate determination of youth, staring in front of her, her hands clenched. Like flame at Lizzie's heart leapt this knowledge. "She and Breton are going--only you can stop them--she and Breton." "Don't you think," said Lizzie, "a little of your husband?" "I'm thinking of him all the time--It's for his sake--that he should have a better chance with someone who cared----" "No, that isn't true," said Lizzie--"It's because you love someone else----" Rachel, with her head down, whispered, "Yes--it's because ... someone else." "Francis Breton." "Yes, Francis Breton." That whisper of his name had in it confidence, worship, defiance ... all these things were torture to Lizzie sitting there, very composed, very stern, very quiet. _She_ should have been able to say that name with just that precious intimacy, and she saw, in Rachel's eyes, beyond her trouble the glad pride that the pronouncing of the name had given her. "You know?" Rachel asked at length. "Yes----" "You've known a long time." "Yes--a long time." "Oh! If you'd only spoken to me!--All this time I've been wanting you to--You _must_ have known." "Yes--I knew." Then Lizzie brought out slowly, letting her grave eyes wander over Rachel's face-- "You yourself insisted on telling me. You have brought it upon yourself if I say what I must...." Rachel caught the hostility. "Yes?" she said sharply. "I'm older than you--older in every way. You know so little yet, the harm that you can do.... You must leave Francis Breton alone, Lady Seddon." Rachel laughed--"Of course I knew that you--that it was the kind of way that you must look at it. But don't you see, we've got past all that first stage--It isn't, in the very least, any good looking at it from any general point of view. It's simply the individual happiness of the three of us, my husband, Francis Breton, myself--It's better for all of us that I should go." "No ... not better for Francis Breton." Rachel moved impatiently--"He--he and I--can judge that, Miss Rand----"