And then one day something said brought them very near to the matter between them. Miss Keggs came nearer yet. She said, “The fact is, Rosalie, I sometimes get so I simply cannot make an effort, the smallest effort. I believe when I’m like that if a thousand pounds were offered me for the going out and asking of it, and God knows I want it badly enough, I simply could not make the effort to do it. I’d simply let it pass and know that I was letting it pass and not care. That’s how it’s got with me, how it is sometimes with me, Rosalie.” Rosalie said with extraordinary emphasis, leaning forward on the chair in which she sat facing Keggo. “Why is it, Keggo?” If Keggo had answered, the thing would not have happened. Keggo did not answer. She was sitting with her hands crossed, one palm upon the other, and resting on her lap, her eyes to the ground. Quite a long time passed. Rosalie said, “You’re drinking, aren’t you, Keggo?” “Yes, drinking, Rosalie.” “Oh, Keggo!” It was then that Rosalie cried. CHAPTER VIII Sne cried. Her sympathies, though drying and slower now to be aroused, still then were such that she could weep for pity. It is a glimpse of her not to be seen again. There was she on her knees by Keggo, and with her arms about Keggo’s waist, and with her head on Keggo’s lap, crying for Keggo; and in the pauses of Keggo’s unfolding of her story entreating her, as one that cried responses to a litany, “Don’t mind, Keggo! Keggo, don’t mind now! Dear Keggo, poor Keggo, it’s all right now.” And presently all the tale told: what Mr. Ponders’ medicine was; and all the humiliation suffered in keeping in with “that vile man”; and that vile man’s betrayal of her to the Sultana, and her dismissal; and all the earlier dreadfulness of her first steps down into her dreadful malady; and all the dreadful secrecy of all those years; and all the horrible humiliation secretly to get her poison; and all the horrible humiliations when her poison got. All the dark tale of that presently told; and her head bowed down to Rosalie’s, and Rosalie’s wet face against her face, and her face also wet; and just her murmurs, murmured at intervals, as though her heart that had discharged its grievous load ran slowly now, slowly to rise and then to well with, “God bless you, Rosalie; oh, Rosalie, God bless you”; and for a long time just seated thus, cheek to cheek, hand to hand, heart to heart; weakness bound about with strength, sorrow in pity’s arms, travail in sanctuary.... It is desired that one should try to see that picture. Its counterpart was not again in the life of Rosalie, hardening.