"It is five-and-twenty minutes past seven, Mrs. Tailleur." "And in five minutes you'll go. And you won't hear a word in my defence? You won't? Why, if I'd murdered somebody and they were going to hang me, they'd let me defend myself before they did it. All I was going to say was--supposing everything you said was true, I think _you_ might have made allowances for me. You can't? I was harder driven than you." "No two cases could well be more different." "Once they were the same. Only it was worse for me. All your temptations are bottled up inside you. Mine rushed at me from inside and outside too. I've had all the things you had. I had a strait-laced parson for my father--so had you. I was poked away in a hole in the country--so were you. I had little sisters--so had you. My mother sent me away from home for fear I should harm them." Her voice shook. "I wouldn't have harmed them for the world. I was sent to live with an old lady--so were you. I was shut up with her all day, till I got ill and couldn't sleep at night. I never saw a soul but one or two other old ladies. They were quite fond of me--I made them. I should have died of it if it hadn't been for that. Then--do listen, Bunny--something happened, and I broke loose, and got away. You never had a chance to get away, so you don't know what it feels like. Perhaps, I think, when it came to the point, you'd have been afraid, or something. I wasn't. And I was young. I'm young still. You can't judge me. Anyhow, I know what you've been through. That's what made me sorry for you. Can't you be a little sorry for me?" Miss Keating said nothing. She was putting on her hat, and her mouth at the moment was closed tight over a long hat-pin. She drew it out slowly between her shut lips. Meeting Kitty's eyes she blinked. "You needn't be sorry," said Kitty. "I've had things that you haven't." Miss Keating turned to the looking-glass and put on her veil. Her back was toward Kitty. The two women's faces were in the glass, the young and the middle-aged, each searching for the other. Kitty's face was tearful and piteous; it pleaded with the other face in the glass, a face furtive with hate, that hung between two lifted arms behind a veil. Miss Keating's hands struggled with her veil. "I mayn't tie it for you?" said Kitty. "No, thank you." There was a knock at the door, and Miss Keating started. "It's the men for your boxes. Come into my room and say good bye." "I prefer to say good bye here, if it's all the same to you. Good bye." "You won't even shake hands with me? Well, if you won't--why should you?" "I am holding out my hand. If you won't take it----" "No, no. I don't want to take it." Kitty was crying. "I must let those men in," said Miss Keating. "You are not going to make a scene?" "I? Oh Lord, no. You needn't mind me. I'll go." She went into her own room and flung herself, face downward, on to her pillow, and slid by the bedside, kneeling, to the floor. CHAPTER IX