"I can't explain," said Nancy. "We couldn't help it. It's even all her fault. But she never asked to come to us. She never sought us out. She had her life and we had ours. It was we who sought her and drew her in and worshipped her. She never hid what she was; never in the least little way. It was for what she was, because she was so different and believed so in herself, that Barney loved her. And now because she has gone on believing in herself, we have struck her down."
The rooks were cawing overhead and Oldmeadow was remembering his dream of a year ago, how Adrienne had come to him along the terrace saying, as she lifted her hand: "I can hear them, too." They had drawn her in. Yet she had loved their life. She had wanted to understand it and to be part of it. He wished he could get the pale, streaked, drowning face out of his mind. "It's generous of you, my dear child," he said, "to say 'we.' You mean 'you.' If anyone struck her down it was I."
"You spoke for us all, Roger. And you only spoke for us. You were always outside. I count myself with them. I can't separate myself from them. I received her love--with them all."
"Did you?" he looked at her. "I don't think so, Nancy."
Nancy did not pretend not to understand. "I know," she said. "But I'm part of it. And she tried to love me."
Oldmeadow sat in Barney's study, Mrs. Chadwick beside him. It was Tuesday and the only news of Barney had been a letter to his mother, from Paris, where he had not found Meg, and two wires from the South of France, one to Oldmeadow and one to his wife, saying that he had found Meg and was returning alone. He had not, it was evident, received the doctor's messages.
Oldmeadow had not seen his old friend since the Sunday night when he had left her and Joséphine in Connaught Square, and in his first glance at her this morning he saw that for her, too, Adrienne's peril had actually effaced Meg's predicament. It had done more. Faint and feeble as she must be, scarcely able to take possession of her returning life and, as Mrs. Chadwick told him, not yet out of danger, Adrienne had already drawn her mother-in-law back into the circle of her influence.
"You see, Roger," she said, sitting there on the absurdly incongruous background of the Post Impressionist pictures and tightly squeezing her handkerchief first in one hand and then in the other, "You see, when one is with her one _has_ to trust her. I don't know why it is, but almost at once I felt all my bitterness against her die quite away. I knew, whatever she had done, that she believed it to be right; to be really _best_ for Meg, you know. And oh, Roger, Barney has hurt her so terribly! She can't speak of him without crying. I never saw her cry before. I never imagined Adrienne crying. She feels, she can't help feeling, that it is because of that they have lost their baby."