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 following her engagement had been happy ones, without fears or questionings…. She could not understand Lydia—but then no one had ever understood her; yet she was wise enough to understand that here was no school-girl’s tempest in a teapot, but a woman’s tragedy, real, terrible, devastating.

Myrtle struggled for understanding…. Her first conclusion, reached by intuition more than by logic, was that Lydia could not love Malcolm Crane. Yet she had promised herself in marriage to him…. The thing was incomprehensible. Why should Lydia Canfield, of all created beings, choose the immolation of a loveless marriage; what could compel her to such a step? She puzzled over it, seeking some romantic explanation, some mystery, but reached the conclusion that there could be nothing to compel Lydia to marry Malcolm against her will. Lydia had wealth, independence, perfect freedom of choice.

There must be some reason, potent to Lydia. Knowing her friend as she did, she recognized the truth that Lydia’s reason might not seem adequate to anybody else—which would not in the least interfere with the power it would exercise over Lydia…. Cross currents of thought, fragments of recollections, opinions previously held flitted through her mind as Lydia