we're like each other—we're like our father—and it would be better for us both if we had never been born—'"
"Ah, cruel!" cried Ashe, involuntarily, and once more his hand found Kitty's small fingers and pressed them in his.
Kitty looked at him with a strange, exalted look.
"No. I think it's true. I often think I'm not made to be happy. I can't ever be happy—it's not in me."
"It's in you to say foolish things then!" said Ashe, lightly, and crossing his arms he tried to assume the practical elder-brotherly air, which he felt befitted the situation—if anything befitted it. For in truth it seemed to him one singularly confused and ugly. Their talk floated above tragic depths, guessed at by him, wholly unknown to her. And yet her youth shrank from it knew not what—"as an animal shrinks from shadows in the twilight." She seemed to him to sit enwrapped in a vague cloud of shame, resenting and hating it, yet not able to escape from thinking and talking of it. But she must not talk of it.
She did not answer his last remark for a little while. She sat looking before her, overwhelmed, it seemed, by an inward rush of images and sensations. Till, with a sudden movement, she turned to him and said, smiling, quite in her ordinary voice:
"Do you know why I shall never be happy? It is because I have such a bad temper."
"Have you?" said Ashe, smiling.
She gave him a curious look.
"You don't believe it? If you had been in the convent, you would have believed it. I'm mad sometimes—quite mad; with pride, I suppose, and vanity. The Soeurs said it was that."
"They had to explain it somehow," said Ashe. "But I am quite sure that if I lived in a convent I should have a furious temper."
"You!" she said, half contemptuously. "You couldn't be ill-tempered anywhere. That's the one thing I don't like about you—you're too calm—too—too satisfied. It's—Well! you said a sharp thing to me, so I don't see why I shouldn't say one to you. You shouldn't look as though you enjoyed your life so much. It's bourgeois! It is, indeed." And she frowned upon him with a little extravagant air that amused him.
By some prescience, she had put on that morning a black dress of thin material, made with extreme simplicity. No flounces, no fanfaronnade. A little girlish dress, that made the girlish figure seem even frailer and lighter than he remembered it the night before in the splendors of her Paris gown. Her large black hat emphasized the whiteness of her brow, the brilliance of her most beautiful eyes; and then all the rest was insubstantial sprite and airy nothing, to be crushed in one hand. And yet what untamed, indomitable things breathed from it—a self surely more self, more intensely, obstinately alive than any he had yet known.
Her attack had brought the involuntary blood to his cheeks, which annoyed him. But he invited her to say why cheerfulness was a vice. She replied that no one should look success—as much as he did.
"And you scorn success?"
"Scorn it!" She drew a long breath, clasped both her hands above her head, then slowly let the thin arms fall again. "Scorn it! What nonsense! But everybody who hasn't got it hates those who have."
"Don't hate me!" said Ashe, quickly.
"Yes," she said, with stubbornness, "I must. Do you know why I was such a wild-cat at school? Because some of the other girls were more important than I—much more important—and richer—and more beautiful—and people paid them more attention. And that seemed to burn the heart in me." She pressed her hands to her breast with a passionate gesture. "You know the French word panache? Well, that's what I care for—that's what I adore! To be the first—the best—the most distinguished. To be envied—and pointed at—obeyed when I lift my finger—and then to come to some great, glorious, tragic end!"
Ashe moved impatiently.
"Lady Kitty, I don't like to hear you talk like this. It's wild, and it's also—I beg your pardon—"
"In bad taste?" she said, catching him up breathlessly. "That's what you meant, isn't it? You said it to me before, when I called you handsome."
"Pshaw!" he said, in vexation. She watched him throw himself back and feel for his cigarette-case; a gesture of her hand gave him leave; she waited, smiling, till he had taken a few calming whiffs. Then she gently moved towards him.
"Don't be angry with me!" she said, in a sweet, low voice. "Don't you understand how hard it is—to have that nature—and then to come here out of the convent—where one had lived on dreams—and find one's self—"
She turned her head away. Ashe put down his new-lit cigarette.
"Find yourself?" he repeated.
"Everybody scorns me!" she said, her brow drooping.
Ashe exclaimed.
"You know it's true. My mother is not received. Can you deny that?"
"She has many friends," said Ashe.
"She is not received. When I speak of her no one answers me. Lady Grosville asked me here—me—out of charity. It would be thought a disgrace to marry me—"
"Look here, Lady Kitty!—"
"And I"—she wrung her small hands, as though she clasped the necks of her enemies—"I would never look at a man who did not think it the glory of his life to win me. So you see, I shall never marry. But then the dreadful thing is—"
She let him see a white, stormy face.
"That I have no loyalty to maman—I—I don't think I even love her."
Ashe surveyed her gravely.
"You don't mean that," he said.
"I think I do," she persisted. "I had a horrid childhood. I won't tell tales; but, you see, I don't know maman. I know the Soeurs much better. And then for some one you don't know—to have to—to have to bear—this horrible thing—"
She buried her face in her hands. Ashe looked at her in perplexity.
"You sha'n't bear anything horrible," he said, with energy. "There are plenty of people who will take care of that. Do you mind telling me—have there been special difficulties just lately?"
"Oh yes," she said, calmly, looking up, "awful! Maman's debts are—well—ridiculous. For that alone I don't think she'll be able to stay in London—apart from—Alice."
The name recalled all she had just passed through, and her face quivered. "What will she do?" she said, under her breath. "How will she punish us?—and why?—for what?"
Her dread, her ignorance, her fierce, bruised vanity, her struggling pride, her helplessness, appealed amazingly to the man beside her. He began to talk to her very gently and wisely, begging her to let the past alone, to think only what could be done to help the present. In the first place, would she not let his mother be of use to her?
He could answer for Lady Tranmore. Why shouldn't Lady Kitty spend the summer with her in Scotland? No doubt Madame d'Estrées would be abroad.
"Then
