"Only because through these weeks I've got to know her so well. She's strange--unlike any other woman I've known. Her great charm is that she's so unattainable. Men will always love her for that and sometimes she may think she loves them in return, but no man will ever call the _real_ woman out of her. If she were to have a child, perhaps that would ... but we--all of us--you, I, Dr. Christopher, her husband--all of us who love her will always love her without quite knowing why and without, in the end, her belonging to any one of us. "I've grown to love her during these last weeks and I've thought it was because I was sorry for her and admired her pluck--but it isn't that really--It's simply because--well, because--there's something wonderful in her that isn't for any of us." "Well, you've been very kind, Miss Rand, I shan't forget it. You've said just the thing to put it all straight and clear. I wouldn't do anything now to disturb her or hurt her husband, poor devil ... it must be hell for him ... and it don't anyway matter much what happens to me--it never has done. "You've been a brick. If you really care to bother about a rotten waster like myself I'll be proud.... Good-bye and thank you----" He took her hand and shook it and then was gone, striding off, furiously, towards the trees. She walked slowly back to Saxton Square. CHAPTER II THE DUCHESS MOVES "Fear of the loss of power has more to do with disasters in the history of nations than any other motive." JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. I Trouble invaded the strongholds of 104 Portland Place that winter: The Duchess was not so well ... no evasions, whether above or below stairs, could conceal the harsh truth. The Duchess was not so well.... To the bewildered mind of Lady Adela the horrid succession of disasters that the winter had provided no other years could equal. It had all begun, she often fancied, from the day of Rachel's coming out, from the ball, or even, although for this she could not find a real excuse, from that visit to the Bond Street Picture Gallery. It was on that afternoon, Lady Adela well remembered, that there had first come to her those strange, treacherous thoughts about her mother that had, afterwards, as they had grown stronger and more formidable, changed life for her. Yes, it had seemed that, with Rachel's appearance before the world, disaster to the Beamister house had appeared also. Her mother's illness, the War, perpetual rumours of Rachel's unsatisfactory marriage, the uncomfortable presence of Frank Breton, the horrible disaster to poor Roddy--how they trooped before Lady Adela's eyes! Finally, more terrible than all of them, was the complete destruction of the old fiction, the old terror, the old submission. Lady Adela did not now dare to look into her mind because of the horrible things that she found there.