"Very well, then!" Bessie cried, flinging her hands outward dramatically. "Isn't that what I'm saying? You knew something. You knew it and you let us go ahead. You not only let us go ahead, but you led us on. You could see already that Archie was spinning his web like a spider, and that he'd catch us as flies. Now didn't you? Tell the truth, Ena. Wasn't it in your mind from the first? Long before it was in his? I'll say that for Archie, that I don't suppose he really meant to ruin us, while you knew he would. That's the difference between a man and his wife. The man only drifts, but the wife sees years ahead what he's drifting to. You saw it, Ena—"
When his stepmother bowed her head to sob into her handkerchief Thor ventured to enter the room. Neither of the women noticed him.
"I must say, Ena," Bessie continued, "that seems to me frightful. I don't know what you can be made of that you've lived cheerfully through these last eighteen years when you knew what was coming. If it had been coming to yourself—well, that might be borne. But to stand by and watch for it to overtake some one else—some one who'd always been your friend—some one you liked, for I do believe you've liked me, in your way and my way—that, I must say, is the limit—cela passe les bornes. Now, doesn't it?"
Mrs. Masterman struggled to speak, but her sobs prevented her.
"In a way it's funny," Bessie continued, philosophically, "how bad a good woman can be. You're a good woman, Ena, of a kind. That is, you're good in as far as you're not bad; and I suppose that for a woman that's a very fair average. But I can tell you that there are sinners whom the world has scourged to the bone who haven't begun to do what you've been doing these past eighteen years—who wouldn't have had the nerve for it. No, Ena," she continued, with another sweeping gesture. "'Pon my soul, I don't know what you're made of. I almost think I admire you. I couldn't have done it; I'll be hanged if I could. There are women who've committed murder and who haven't been as cool as you. They've committed murder in a frantic fit of passion that went as quick as it came, and they've swung for it, or done time for it. But they'd never have had the pluck to sit and smile and wait for this minute as you've waited for it—when you saw it from such a long way off."
It was the crushed attitude in which his stepmother sank weeping into a chair that broke the spell by which Thor had been held paralyzed; but before he could speak Bessie turned and saw him.
"Oh, so it's you, Thor. Well, I wish you could have come a minute ago to hear what I've been saying."
"I've heard it, Mrs. Willoughby—"
"Then I am sure you must agree with me. Or rather, you would if you knew how things had been managed in Paris eighteen years ago. I've been trying to tell your dear stepmother that we've been mistaken in her. We haven't done her justice. We've thought of her as just a sweet and gentle ladylike person, when all the while she's been a heroine. She's been colossal—as Clytemnestra was colossal, and Lady Macbeth. She beats them both; for I don't believe either of them could have watched the sword of Damocles taking eighteen years to fall on a friend and not have had nervous prostration—while she's as fresh as ever."
He laid his hand on her arm. "You'll come away now, won't you, Mrs. Willoughby?" he begged.