After the doctor had gone and Loretta had been removed to her own room, Mrs. Wilson and Constance watched by the side of the sufferer, whose low moaning was the sole disturber of the stillness of the breaking dawn. Each was lost in her own secret thoughts. The cruel finger-marks on Mrs. Wilson's neck burned painfully, but the words of her mad critic had seared her soul. For the moment social truth seemed sadly remote. She reflected mournfully but humbly that ever and anon proud man and his systems are held up to derision by the silent forces of nature. When the darkness had faded so that they could discern each other's faces, she arose, and sitting down beside Constance on the sofa drew her toward her and kissed her. Was it in acknowledgment that she had saved her life, or as a symbol of a broader faith? "Kiss me too, Constance," she whispered. The embrace was fondly returned, and at this loosening of the tension of their strained spirits they wept gently in each other's arms. Then Mrs. Wilson added, "Come, let us go where we can talk. We could do nothing at present which my maid cannot do." She led the way to her boudoir. The idea of seeking sleep had never occurred to either of them. Although Mrs. Wilson had felt the need of speech, it was some minutes after they had established themselves before she broke the silence. When she did so she spoke suddenly and with emotion, like one beset by a repugnant conviction yet loath to acknowledge it. "Can I have deserved this, Constance?" The vivid protest in her companion's face made clear that Constance did not penetrate her subtler meaning, and she hastened to answer her own question. "Not to be strangled by a violent lunatic," she said, raising a hand involuntarily to her neck. "But her words were a judgment--a lacerating judgment. How I should loathe it--to scrub dirty marble floors forever and ever. It is just that--the dirt, the disorder, the common reek, which I shrink from and shun in spite of myself. How did she ever find out? I love too much the lusciousness of life. 'It is the little rift within the lute That by and by will make the music mute, And ever widening slowly silence all.' Do you not see, Constance?"