"I mustn't stay,"' she said breathlessly. "I--I have to be back at the theatre at seven, and I ought to go home first for a few minutes. My girl--she's just a Swedish woman that I picked up by chance--worries about me as if she were my mother, unless I come in and rest, and take an eggnog, or something." She rallied her forces with a quite visible effort. "It was just this, Rachael," said Magsie, looking at the fire, and twisting her white gloves in desperate embarrassment, "I know you've always liked me, you've always been so kind to me, and I can only hope that you'll forgive me if what I say sounds strange to you. I thought I could come here and say it, but--I've always been a little bit afraid of you, Rachael--and I"--Magsie laughed nervously--"and I'm scared to death now!" she said simply. Something natural, unaffected, and direct in her usually self-conscious and artificial manner struck Rachael with a vague sense of uneasiness. Magsie certainly did not seem to be acting now; there were real tears in her pretty eyes, and a genuine break in her young voice. "I'm going straight ahead," she said rapidly, "because I've been getting up my courage this whole week to come and see you, and now, while Greg is in Albany, I can't put it off any longer. He doesn't know it, of course, and, although I know I'm putting myself entirely at your mercy, Rachael, I believe you'll never tell him if I ask you not to!" "I don't understand," Rachael said slowly. "I've been thinking it all out," Magsie went on, "and this is the conclusion--at least, this is what I've thought! You have always had everything, Rachael. You've always been so beautiful, and so much admired. You loved Clarence, and married him--oh, don't think I'm rude, Rachael," the girl pleaded eagerly, as Rachael voiced an inarticulate protest, "because I'm so desperately in earnest, and s-s-so desperately unhappy!" Her voice broke on a rush of tears, but she commanded it, and hurried on. "You've always been fortunate, not like other women, who had to be second best, but ALWAYS the cleverest, and ALWAYS the handsomest! I remember, when I heard you were to marry Greg, I was just sick with misery for two or three days! I had seen him a few weeks before in Paris, but he said nothing of it, didn't even mention you. Don't think I was jealous, Rachael--it wasn't that. But it seemed to me that you had everything! First the position of marrying a Breckenridge, then to step straight into Greg's life. You'll never know how I--how I singled you out to watch--" "Just as I have singled you out this horrible winter," Rachael said to herself, in strange pain and bewilderment at heart. Magsie watched her hopefully, but Rachael did not speak, and the girl went on: