"The doctor has thrown his charm over you!"
"He has saved my life!" Margaret murmured; "at least he has shown me how to save it," she corrected.
There it was again, the mysterious Peace that possessed her, that had touched Margaret's hard, defiant spirit and tamed it. But Isabelle, remembering the letters with the Panama postmark she had seen lying on the hall table, wondered, and she could not help saying:—
"You are young yet, Margaret,—oh, it might be—happiness, all that you have missed!"
"No!" Margaret replied, with a little smile. "I—think not!"
She closed her eyes as if she were contemplating that other happiness, and after a silence she opened them and touched Isabelle's hand.
"I want to tell you something, dear…. I loved Rob Falkner, very much, the most a woman can."
"I knew it! … I felt it…. That it only might be!"
"He came to me," Margaret continued, "when I was hard and bitter about life, when I was dead…. It was the kind of love that women dream of, ours,—the perfect thing you feel in your heart has always been there,—that takes all of you! … It was good for us both—he needed me, and I needed him."
"Margaret!"