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 (save only Callendar himself) would have sacrificed her to their own schemes. He would sacrifice her only to himself.

"She was a little out of her head, I think . . . for a long time after little Thérèse was born. She grieved too because she could never have another child. She wanted to give Dick an heir. . . . She was very much in love with him . . . then." The last word she added, as if by an afterthought.

At this Ellen thrust forward another pawn, another bit of knowledge which had come to her from Sabine. "He neglects her badly, doesn't he?"

Thérèse pursed her lips and frowned, as if for a moment the game had gotten out of hand. "I don't fancy it's a case of neglect. . . . They're simply not happy. You see, it was not . . ." She smiled with deprecation. "Shall I be quite frank? It was not a matter of love in the beginning. . . . It was a mariage de convenance."

"Yes. He told me that . . . himself. Before the wedding took place."

There was a light now in Ellen's eye, a wicked gleam as if the game were amusing her tremendously, as if she found a mischievous delight in baiting this shrewd old woman with bits of knowledge which showed her how little she really knew of all that had taken place.

"Of course," Thérèse continued, "she fell in love with him after a time. . . . But for him it was impossible. . . . You see, there is only one person with whom he has ever really been in love. It was a case of fascination. . . ."

Ellen did not ask who this person was because she knew now, beyond all doubt. She had a strange sense of having lived all this scene before, and she knew that it was her sense of drama which was again giving her the advantage; once before it had saved her when her will, her conscious will, had come near to collapse. (Long ago it was . . . in the preposterous Babylon Arms which Clarence had thought so grand.)

"He gave me a dog," she said, by way of letting Mrs. Callendar