Selma looked at her with wide, serious eyes.
"Where have you been keeping yourself of late? Busy with the writing, I suppose?"
"I owe you an apology," said Selma, in a queer, suppressed voice. "I have been hating you, and trying to think of some way to keep you and Victor Dorn apart. I thought it was from my duty to the cause. I've found out that it was a low, mean personal reason."
Jane had stopped short, was regarding her with eyes that glowed in a pallid face. "Because you are in love with him?" she said.
Selma gave a quick, shamed nod. "Yes," she said—the sound was scarcely audible.
Selma's frank and generous—and confiding—self-sacrifice aroused no response in Jane Hastings. For the first time in her life she was knowing what it meant to hate.
"And I've got to warn you," Selma went on, "that I am going to do whatever I can to keep you from hindering him. Not because I love him, but because I owe it to the cause. He belongs to it, and I must help him be single-hearted for it. You could only be a bad influence in his life. I think you would like to be a sincere woman; but you can't. Your class is too strong for you. So—it would be wrong for Victor Dorn to love and to marry you. I think he realizes it and is struggling to be true to himself. I intend to help him, if I can."
Jane smiled cruelly. "What hypocrisy!" she said, and turned and walked away.