“It so justifies me!”
“It does that, Miss!”
I couldn’t have desired more emphasis, but I just hesitated. “She’s so horrible?”
I saw my colleague scarce knew how to put it. “Really shocking.”
“And about me?”
“About you, Miss—since you must have it. It’s beyond everything, for a young lady; and I can’t think wherever she must have picked up———”
“The appalling language she applied to me? I can, then!” I broke in with a laugh that was doubtless significant enough.
It only, in truth, left my friend still more grave. “Well, perhaps I ought to also—since I’ve heard some of it before! Yet I can’t bear it,” the poor woman went on while, with the same movement, she glanced, on my dressing table, at the face of my watch. “But I must go back.”
I kept her, however. “Ah, if you can’t bear it———!”
“How can I stop with her, you mean? Why, just for that: to get her away. Far from this,” she pursued, “far from them———”
“She may be different? She may be free?”
