"How can you!" she exclaimed, indignantly. "You have no right."
Marion stood between her and the door.
"I have every right," she said, "to help my friends, and I want to
help you and Philip. And, indeed, I do hope you _are_ sorry. I
hope you are miserable. And I'm glad you saw me kiss him. That was the
first and the last time, and I did it because I was happy and glad for
him; and because I love him, too, but not in the least in the way he
loves you. No one ever loved any one as he loves you. And it's time
you found it out. And if I have helped to make you find it out, I'm
glad, and I don't care how much I hurt you."
"Marion!" exclaimed Helen, "what does it mean? Do you mean that you
are not engaged; that--"
"Certainly not," Marion answered. "I am going to marry Reggie. It is
you that Philip loves, and I am very sorry for you that you don't love
him."
Helen clasped Marion's hands in both of hers.
"But, Marion!" she cried, "I do, oh, I do!"
* * * * *
There was a thick yellow fog the next morning, and with it rain and a
sticky, depressing dampness which crept through the window-panes, and
which neither a fire nor blazing gas-jets could overcome.
Philip stood in front of the fireplace with the morning papers piled
high on the centre-table and scattered over the room about him.
He had read them all, and he knew now what it was to wake up famous,
but he could not taste it. Now that it had come it meant nothing, and
that it was so complete a triumph only made it the harder.
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