Katherine rose, looked at her half-bewildered; then the magnetism of the sympathy in Felicia's eyes and impulsively outstretched arms attracted her involuntarily. She made a step forward, and, with a little cry, half-sob, half-welcome, gave herself up to Felicia's clasp.
“I heard you. I had to come,” said Felicia. Katherine did not reply. For a long time they sat together without speaking, the elder woman's misery turned to sadness by the sweet and sudden tenderness. She cried softly in the girl's arms.
“It was good of you to come,” she said at last. “I had broken down-- utterly broken down.”
“I felt it,” answered Felicia gently. She smoothed Katherine's ruffled fair hair with a light touch and kissed her forehead.
“Some things are final, irrevocable. The sun goes out of one's heart for ever and ever.”
“Could I do nothing for you? Practically I mean. You see, I know--a word--it might be in my power--”
She hesitated, touching upon delicate ground. Katherine lifted a tear-stained face, and looked at her curiously.
“You love him--and yet you would help me?”
“Because he loves you, dear,” said Felicia. “And because it has come upon me that I have been doing you a great wrong--in thinking badly of you.”
“Intuition, I suppose--and when I seemed to realize what his love for you meant. He could only love what was worthy of him.”
“That is why he can love me no more,” said Katherine in a low voice.
She paused for a moment, her breath coming quickly. Then she continued hurriedly, twining her fingers in a nervous clasp: “Things have happened that make it impossible for him to care for me--I shall never see him again. I am going away this afternoon--see,”--she pointed to a dressing-bag packed, but still open, lying on the table. “And I shall pass out of his life altogether.”
“But I don't understand!” cried Felicia, in grieved dismay. “What could make him cease to love you?”
“I have not been what the world calls a good woman, Felicia. God knows I have paid the penalty already--but the bitterest penalty of all is yet to be paid--the surrender of the longed-for Paradise, that only a woman who has lived as I have done can long for. Oh, my child, my dear, tender little girl, the way of the world is made hard for women sometimes.”