"Oh, safer," Flora breathed. "Oh, yes; indeed, I know. But if something had been put into your hands without your choice; if all the life of some one that you cared about depended on you, would you think of being safe?" Flora, leaning forward, chin in hand, with shining eyes, seemed fairly to impart a reflection of her own passionate concentration to the woman before her.
Mrs. Herrick, so calm in her reposeful attitude, calm as the old portrait on the wall behind her, none the less began to show a curious sparkle of excitement in her face. "If I were sure that person's life did depend on me," she measured out her words deliberately. "But that so seldom happens, and it is so hard to tell."
"But if you were sure, sure, sure!" Flora rang it out certainly.
Mrs. Herrick in her turn leaned forward. "Ah, even then it would depend on him. And do you think you can make a man do otherwise than his nature?"
"You think I should fail?" Flora took it up fearlessly. "Well, if I do, at least I shall have done my best. I shall have to have done my best or I can never forgive myself."
"I see," Mrs. Herrick sighed. "But it sounds to me a risk too great for any reward that could come of its success." She thought. "If you could tell me more." Then, as Flora only looked at her wistfully and silently: "Isn't there some one you can confide in? Not Mrs. Britton?"
"Clara? Oh, no; never!" Flora startled Mrs. Herrick with the passionate repudiation.
"But could not Mr. Cressy—" and with that broken sentence several things that Mrs. Herrick had been keeping back looked out of her face.
Flora answered with a stare of misery. "I know what you must be thinking—what you can not help thinking," she said, "that the whole thing is unheard-of—outrageous—especially for a girl so soon to—to be—" She caught her breath with a sob, for the words she could not speak. "But there is nothing in this disloyal to my engagement, even though I can not speak of it to Harry Cressy; and nothing I hope to gain for myself by what I am trying to do. If I succeed it will only mean I shall never see him—the other one—again."
Mrs. Herrick rose, in her turn beseeching. "Oh, I can't help you go into it! It is too dubious. My dear, I know so much better than you what the end may mean."