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 an hour. When at last Sabine managed to outstay Aunt Cassie (it was always a contest between them, for each knew that the other would attack her as soon as she was out of hearing) she turned to Olivia and said abruptly, "I've been thinking about Aunt Cassie, and I'm sure now of one thing. Aunt Cassie is a virgin!"

There was something so cold-blooded and sudden in the statement that Olivia laughed.

"I'm sure of it," persisted Sabine with quiet seriousness. "Look at her. She's always talking about the tragedy of her being too frail ever to have had children. She never tried. That's the answer. She never tried." Sabine tossed away what remained of the cigarette she had lighted to annoy Aunt Cassie, and continued. "You never knew my Uncle Ned Struthers when he was young. You only knew him as an old man with no spirit left. But he wasn't that way always. It's what she did to him. She destroyed him. He was a full-blooded kind of man who liked drinking and horses and he must have liked women, too, but she cured him of that. He would have liked children, but instead of a wife he only got a woman who couldn't bear the thought of not being married and yet couldn't bear what marriage meant. He got a creature who fainted and wept and lay on a sofa all day, who got the better of him because he was a nice, stupid, chivalrous fellow."

Sabine was launched now with all the passion which seized her when she had laid bare a little patch of life and examined it minutely.

"He didn't even dare to be unfaithful to her. If he looked at another woman she fainted and became deathly ill and made terrible scenes. I can remember some of them. I remember that once he called on Mrs. Soames when she was young and beautiful, and when he came home Aunt Cassie met him in hysterics and told him that if it ever happened