Lily sprang up and caught her with strong hands. “Gerty, you know him—you understand him—tell me; if I went to him, if I told him everything—if I said: ‘I am bad through and through—I want admiration, I want excitement, I want money—’ yes, MONEY! That’s my shame, Gerty—and it’s known, it’s said of me—it’s what men think of me—If I said it all to him—told him the whole story—said plainly: ‘I’ve sunk lower than the lowest, for I’ve taken what they take, and not paid as they pay’—oh, Gerty, you know him, you can speak for him: if I told him everything would he loathe me? Or would he pity me, and understand me, and save me from loathing myself?” Gerty stood cold and passive. She knew the hour of her probation had come, and her poor heart beat wildly against its destiny. As a dark river sweeps by under a lightning flash, she saw her chance of happiness surge past under a flash of temptation. What prevented her from saying: “He is like other men?” She was not so sure of him, after all! But to do so would have been like blaspheming her love. She could not put him before herself in any light but the noblest: she must trust him to the height of her own passion. “Yes: I know him; he will help you,” she said; and in a moment Lily’s passion was weeping itself out against her breast. There was but one bed in the little flat, and the two girls lay down on it side by side when Gerty had unlaced Lily’s dress and persuaded her to put her lips to the warm tea. The light extinguished, they lay still in the darkness, Gerty shrinking to the outer edge of the narrow couch to avoid contact with her bed-fellow. Knowing that Lily disliked to be caressed, she had long ago learned to check her demonstrative impulses toward her friend. But tonight every fibre in her body shrank from Lily’s nearness: it was torture to listen to her breathing, and feel the sheet stir with it. As Lily turned, and settled to completer rest, a strand of her hair swept Gerty’s cheek with its fragrance. Everything about her was warm and soft and scented: even the stains of her grief became her as rain-drops do the beaten rose. But as Gerty lay with arms drawn down her side, in the motionless narrowness of an effigy, she felt a stir of sobs from the breathing warmth beside her, and Lily flung out her hand, groped for her friend’s, and held it fast. “Hold me, Gerty, hold me, or I shall think of things,” she moaned; and Gerty silently slipped an arm under her, pillowing her head in its hollow as a mother makes a nest for a tossing child. In the warm hollow Lily lay still and her breathing grew low and regular. Her hand still clung to Gerty’s as if to ward off evil dreams, but the hold of her fingers relaxed, her head sank deeper into its shelter, and Gerty felt that she slept. Chapter 15 When Lily woke she had the bed to herself, and the winter light was in the room.