' Her voice lingered on those words. 'Yes, for a little while,
but you don't keep love, Rose Mallett. No, you don't. I'm sorry for
you now. Tell Henrietta she needn't be afraid, because I'm sorry for
you. Yes, you and I are in the same boat, in the same deserted boat.
If there were any rats they would run away. You said so yourself.'
'I said the cat had gone.'
'Then you knew?'
Rose shook her head. It was her turn to smile. She was prepared for
anything Christabel might say, she was even anxious to hear it, but
when Christabel spoke in a mysteriously gleeful manner, she had
difficulty in repressing a shudder. It was not, she told herself, that
she suffered from the knowledge now imparted by Christabel with detail
and with proofs, but her malice, her salacious curiosity were more
than Rose could bear. She felt that the whole affair, which at first,
so long ago, had possessed a noble sadness, a secret beauty, the
quality of a precious substance enclosed in a common vial, was
indecent and unclean.
'So you see,' Christabel said, 'you haven't kept him; you won't keep
Henrietta.'
Rose said nothing. She was thinking of what she might have done and
she was glad she had not done it.
'You don't seem to mind,' Christabel said. 'Why don't you ask me why
I'm so sure?' She laughed. 'I ought to know how to find things out by
this time, and I know Francis, yes, better than you do. When I had my
accident--it wasn't worth it, was it?--I said to myself, 'Now he won't
be faithful to me.
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