"That's just the time your _real_ friends--if they're worth anything--want to see you. If they can be of any use----" "But you'd been such a tremendous help to me. I was ashamed to come to you any more. Besides, you'd showed me, in a way, that I ought to get through on my own without asking help from anyone. You'd taught me that I did try." She saw that he was shining with the glory of one who had come, rather mightily, unaided through times of stress. A pleasant self-congratulatory pathos stirred behind his words. "It _was_ a bad time--but it's all right now. And I expect it was good for me," was really what he said. "I do want to tell you," he went on eagerly, "about Rachel. It's all been so strange--wonderful in a way. After that talk I had with you in the park I was absolutely broken up. Oh! but done for! I simply went under. I tried to go back to some of that old set I've told you about before, but the awful thing was that Rachel wouldn't let me. Thinking of her, wanting her when all those other women were about. It simply wasn't possible.... "It got worse and worse. I thought I'd go off my head. Then--do you remember that awful thunderstorm we had?" "Yes," said Lizzie, "I remember it very well." "That night was a kind of climax. I'd dined with Christopher, then got wandering about--it was horribly close and heavy--got into some music hall. I suppose I'd been drinking--anyway, I had suddenly a kind of vision, there in the music hall. I thought Rachel was dead, that I'd lost her altogether. And then--it's all so hard to explain--but when I came to myself I seemed to understand that the only way I could keep her was by giving her up.... I've got it all muddled, but that was what it came to." "You were quite right," said Lizzie. "Well, then--what do you think happened? The very next day my uncle, John Beaminster, came to see me--yes, came himself. Talked and was most pleasant and wanted to be friends. At the same time--now just listen to this--came a note from Seddon asking me to go and see him. I went, found Rachel there. Apparently my delightful grandmother had been telling him stories about Rachel and me, and he wanted to put things straight. As though this weren't enough, right upon us, without a word of warning, dropped my grandmother herself!" He stopped that he might convey fully to Lizzie the drama of the occasion. There was, in his words, just that touch of absurdity and exaggeration that she had noticed at her very first meeting with him. He was always too passionately anxious to thrill his audience!