Rose smiled. It seemed impossible to move her. “No, Henrietta. I left jealousy behind years ago. We won’t discuss this any further. It doesn’t bear discussion. It’s beyond it.” “I know it’s very unpleasant,” Henrietta said politely, “but if we are to go on living together, we ought to clear things up.” “We are not going on living together,” Rose said. She left the table and stood before the fire, one hand on the mantelshelf and one foot on the fender. The long, soft lines of her dark dress were merged into the shadows, and the white arm, the white face and neck seemed to be disembodied. Henrietta, struck dumb by that announcement, and feeling the situation wrested from the control of her young hands, stared at the slight figure which had typified beauty for her since she first saw it. “Then you don’t like me,” she faltered. Rose did not move, but she began to speak. “Henrietta, I have loved you very dearly, almost as if you were my daughter, but you didn’t seem to want my love. I couldn’t force it on you, but it has been here: it is still here. I think you have the power of making people love you, yet you do nothing for it except, perhaps, exist. One ought not to ask any more; I don’t ask it, but you ought to learn to give. You’ll find it’s the only thing worth doing. Taking—taking—one becomes atrophied. No, it isn’t that I don’t care for you, it isn’t that. I am going to be married.” Very carefully, Henrietta put her plate aside, and, supporting her face in her hands, she pressed her elbows into the table; she pressed hard until they hurt. So Aunt Rose was going to be married while Henrietta was deserved. “Not to Francis Sales?” she whispered. “Yes, to Francis Sales.” She had a wild moment of anger, succeeded by horror for Aunt Rose. Was she stupid? Was she insensible? And Henrietta said, “But you can’t, Aunt Rose, you can’t.” Her distress and a kind of envy gave her courage. “He isn’t good enough. He played with you and then with me and you said there was some one else.” The figure by the mantelpiece was so still that Henrietta became convinced of the potency of her own words, and she went on: “You know everything about him and you can’t marry him. How can you marry him?” A sound, like the faint and distant wailing of the wind, came out of the shadows into which Rose had retreated: “Ah, how?” “And you’re going to leave me—for him!” “Yes—for him.” “Aunt Rose, you would be happier with me.” Again there came that faint sound. “Perhaps.” “I’d try to be kinder to you. I don’t understand you.” “No, you don’t understand me. Do you understand yourself?” She left her place and put her hands on Henrietta’s shoulders. “Say no more,” she said with unmistakable authority. “Say no more, neither to me nor to anybody else. This is beyond you. And now come into the drawing-room. Don’t cry, Henrietta. I’m not going to be married for some time.” “I wish I’d known you loved me,” Henrietta sobbed. “I tried to show you.”