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 window and asked abruptly, "What are you going to do about him?"

Again Olivia thought it best not to answer, but Sabine went on pushing home her point relentlessly, "You must forgive me for speaking plainly, but I have a great affection for you both . . . and I . . . well, I have a sense of conscience in the affair."

"You needn't have. There's nothing to have a conscience about."

"You're not being very honest."

Suddenly Olivia burst out angrily, "And why should it concern you, Sabine . . . in the least? Why should I not do as I please, without interference?"

"Because, here . . . and you know this as well as I do . . . here such a thing is impossible."

In a strange fashion she was suddenly afraid of Sabine, perhaps because she was so bent upon pushing things to a definite solution. It seemed to Olivia that she herself was losing all power of action, all capacity for anything save waiting, pretending, doing nothing.

"And I'm interested," continued Sabine slowly, "because I can't bear the tragic spectacle of another John Pentland and Mrs. Soames."

"There won't be," said Olivia desperately. "My father-in-law is different from Michael."

"That's true. . . ."

"In a way . . . a finer man." She found herself suddenly in the amazing position of actually defending Pentlands.

"But not," said Sabine with a terrifying reasonableness, "so wise a one . . . or one so intelligent."

"No. It's impossible to say. . . ."

"A thing like this is likely to come only once to a woman."

("Why does she keep repeating the very things that I've