Even the remembrance was too much. Hester wiped away two large tears onto a dear little handkerchief just large enough to receive them, and went on with a quaver in her voice.

"I was so shocked at myself that I found it quite easy to tell them next day that I was sorry I had lost my temper; but they have not been the same since. Not that I wanted them to be the same. I would rather they were different. But I was anxious to keep on cordial terms with Minna's friends. She quarrels with them herself, but that is different. I suppose it is inevitable if you are on terms of great intimacy with people you don't really care for."

"At any rate, they have not interrupted you again?"

"N—no. But still, I was often interrupted. Minna has too much to do, and she is not strong just now, and she often sends up one of the children, and I was so nearly fierce with one of them—poor little things!—that I felt the risk was becoming too great, so I have left off writing between breakfast and luncheon, and I get up directly it is light instead. It is light very early now. Only the worst part of it is that I am so tired for the rest of the day that I can hardly drag myself about."

Rachel said nothing. She seldom commented on the confidences that were made to her. She saw that Hester, always delicate, was making an enormous effort under conditions which would be certain to entail disastrous effects on her health. The book was sapping her strength like a vampire, and the Gresleys were evidently exhausting it still further by unconsciously strewing her path with difficulties. Rachel did not know them, but she supposed they belonged to that large class whose eyes are holden.

"And the book itself? Is it nearly finished?"

Hester's face changed. Eagerly, shyly, enthusiastically she talked to her friend about the book, as a young girl talks of her lover. Everything else was forgotten. Hester's eyes burned. Her color came and went. She was transfigured.

The protecting, anxious affection died out of Rachel's face as she looked at Hester, and gave place to a certain wistful, half-envious admiration. She had once been shaken by all these emotions herself, years ago, when she was in love. She had regarded them as a revelation while they lasted; and afterwards, as a steep step—a very steep step—upon the stair of life. But she realized now that such as Hester live constantly in the world which the greater number of us can only enter when human passion lends us the key; the world at which, when the gates are shut against us, the coarser minded among us are not ashamed to level their ridicule and contempt.

Hester spoke brokenly with awe and reverence of her book, as of some mighty presence, some constraining power outside herself. She saw it complete, beautiful—an entrancing vision, inaccessible, as a sunset.