“Oh, Miss Page, what shall I do. What will become of me? what shall I say to Harry? I shall go mad!”
Anne laid her cheek on the head that rested against her shoulder, and was silent.
She understood what was passing in the soul of the weak, terror-struck little woman. The horror of outraged conventions, the nightmare conviction that she, the descendant of generations of respectable, honest women, she who had never heard of the sin she had committed, except in accents of disdain or horror, had become an abandoned creature, unfit for decent society, branded, defiled, eternally lost.
Anne’s heart went out to her in passionate pity.
“Oh help me! Tell me what to do,” Madge wailed. “You’re the only woman in the world I dared to tell, because——”
The abrupt pause, and a nervous gesture betrayed her, and Anne started a little, overcome by a sudden conviction.
“Yes. Why did you tell me, my dear?” she asked quietly.
“Because,” began Madge hurriedly, “you are so kind, so sweet, I felt——”
“That wasn’t the only reason.”
“No!” she cried with sudden recklessness. “It wasn’t. It’s because I heard that you—that you—Helen Didier found it out. She never rested. And then I asked—him, and he said I was never to mention your name to her. But she found out all about it, on the pretence that it was you who had corrupted my mind, and made me what she calls fast. And so——”