and collapsed into banality), "It was like a flash of lightning."
"It would be," said Thérèse, "with him. I don't believe he understands what it is."
"And I haven't seen him since."
"He has never spoken a word of it. . . . Always he tells me."
Something of the girl's awkwardness had vanished now, and between them there was a sense of a sympathy that had not before existed. It was the manner now of two women who were confidants.
"There is nothing I can do," said Ellen, "nothing. It is hopeless."
"You were a brave girl to go on coming here."
A flash of Ellen's old spirit returned as she said, "What could I do? Running away helped nothing. . . . It's hard because I have had no one to speak to . . . no one I could talk it over with. . . . You see, I am really alone. . . . It never mattered before. . . . I mean . . . the loneliness."
They faced each other, two women, each possessed of intelligence and honesty, striving to discover some way out of the tangle in which they were caught. Being wise, they knew perhaps the uselessness of violence. They waited, each knowing well enough that there was much more concerned than simple romance. Thérèse knew, no doubt, that the young woman who, stripped now of her fierce secrecy, sat opposite her, frightened and tearful, was not simply an adventuress seeking to gain a husband and a vast fortune. She knew, too, how much these things would have meant to the girl, and she understood well enough that Ellen, face to face with an unaccustomed tangle, lacked the experience which could have helped her.
On Ellen's side, she must have been conscious of facing a mystery. The plump woman, covered with dirty diamonds, was her friend, yet, despite her kindliness, she was remote, separated from her by differences of blood, of tradition, of a million things. She was as remote, as beyond comprehension in the subtlety of her
