At that word it was as though a great hammer had, of a sudden, hit her heart and slain it. The street, shining with the rain, rose ever so little and bent towards her.
"Wrong?" she said, looking up at him.
"Yes. I don't know about your standards—you've been always so kind to me and put up with my faults and so I've been encouraged——"
Her relief should have awaked the gods of Olympus with its triumph.
"I've meant everything I've ever said——"
"Yes, I'm sure you have and that's why I think you'll understand. As I say, I've got to tell someone or I'll burst. It's just this—it's my cousin Rachel—Lady Seddon. Ever since we first met in your room she's been my whole world. Nothing else has mattered. It's she that's kept me all these months from going under. She's my life, my whole existence now and in the world to come, if there is one. Oh! Thank God!" he cried. "I've told someone at last. If you don't approve I can't help it. I know you'll keep my secret and, after all, it's nothing very terrible. I'm content to go on like this, just seeing her sometimes, writing to her sometimes. Now you know, Miss Rand, what's been my secret all this time. I've felt it's been between us and that's why I had to tell you. We'll be twice the friends that we were now that I've told you. And I must, I must have someone to talk to about her sometimes. It's been killing me, getting along without it."
Now that he had begun words poured from him. He did not know that it was raining; he saw only Rachel with her white face and dark hair.
Lizzie pulled her wrap about her; she was very cold and the rain was coming fast.
He was suddenly conscious of this.
"I say, what a brute I am! It's pouring!" He called a passing hansom and they climbed into it.