After he had gone she sat for several minutes thinking of life with him, toward which reason and circumstances pressed her, and from which, since the day he had declared himself, she had shrunk. This marriage was so different from the marriage of her dreams--a marriage of love, of common ideals; yet in it, her judgment told her, lay the best use of her life. She dismissed her troubling thoughts with a sigh and walked back to the library. As she entered Kate rose from a high-backed chair behind the great square library-table, whose polished top shone with the light from the chandelier. Kate's face was white, the mouth was a taut line, the eyes gleamed feverishly amid the purpled rings of wakeful nights. Helen came smiling across the noiseless rug, her hand held out. "I'm very happy to see you, Miss Morgan." Kate did not move. She allowed Helen to stand a moment, hand still outheld, while her dark eyes blazed into Helen's face. Then she abruptly laid her hand into the other, and as abruptly withdrew it. "I want to speak to you," she said. "Certainly. Won't you sit down?" Kate jerked a hand toward the wide, curtained doorway through which Helen had entered. "Close the door." "Why?" asked Helen, surprised. "Close the door," she repeated in the same low, short tone. "Nobody must hear." The forced voice, and the repressed agitation of Kate's bearing, startled Helen. She drew together the easy-running doors, and returned to the table. Kate jerked her hand toward the open plate-glass door that led into the conservatory. "And that door." "There's no one in there." But Helen closed the heavy pane of glass. "Won't you sit down," she said, when this was done, taking one of the richly carved chairs herself. "No." Kate's eyes blazed down upon Helen's face; her breath came and went rapidly, with a wheezing sound; her hands, on the luminous table-top, were clenched. Her whole body was so rigid that it trembled. The colour began to leave Helen's face. "I'm waiting--go on." Kate's lips suddenly quivered back from her teeth. She had to strike, even if she struck unjustly. "People like you"--her voice was harsh, tremulous with hate--"you always believe the worst of a man. You throw him aside--crush him down--walk on him. You never think perhaps you've made a mistake, perhaps he's all right. Oh, no--you never think good of a man if you can think bad." She leaned over the corner of the table. "I hate your kind of people! I hate you!" "Is this the thing you wanted no one to hear?" Helen asked quietly. Kate slowly straightened up. After two days and two nights--a long, fierce, despairing battle between selfish and unselfish love--she had decided she must come here; but now her rehearsed sentences all left her. For a moment she stood choking; then the bald words dropped out: "He's not a thief--never was one." "Who?" "David Aldrich."