longed to be different, but that something—some strange twist in her nature—would not let her. She seemed to her like a woman pushing her frail boat farther and farther out into a dangerous current, and all the time crying weakly and piteously for help. She doubted if that cry reached any ears but hers.
"I am the only one who can help her," she thought, and at the same time sent up a prayer to the god who understands women—if such there be.
A few days later she sent Louise a note, asking her to come and see her.
"If I can only avoid being mother-in-lawish," she thought, "I may be able to accomplish something."
Louise found her sitting in her high-backed chair beside a wood fire. The room was full of the scent of freesias, and she wore a few of them in the front of her gray dress.
When Louise had put aside her wraps, Madame Claire began to say what she had to say without any unnecessary preliminaries.
"Louise, I particularly wanted a talk with you to-day. I hope you'll be very frank with me, as I mean to be very frank with you."
