mad--to-night, alone in my room, I wanted to sit near a woman--'twas not
like me, was it?"

Mistress Anne crept near the bed's edge, and stretching forth a hand,
touched hers, which were as cold as marble.

"Stay with me, sister," she prayed. "Sister, do not go! What--what can
I say?"

"Naught," was the steady answer. "There is naught to be said. You were
always a woman--I was never one--till now."

She rose up from her chair and threw up her arms, pacing to and fro.

"I am a desperate creature," she cried. "Why was I born?"

She walked the room almost like a thing mad and caged.

"Why was I thrown into the world?" striking her breast. "Why was I made
so--and not one to watch or care through those mad years? To be given a
body like this--and tossed to the wolves."

She turned to Anne, her arms outstretched, and so stood white and strange
and beauteous as a statue, with drops like great pearls running down her
lovely cheeks, and she caught her breath sobbingly, like a child.

"I was thrown to them," she wailed piteously, "and they harried me--and
left the marks of their great teeth--and of the scars I cannot rid
myself--and since it was my fate--pronounced from my first hour--why was
not this," clutching her breast, "left hard as 'twas at first? Not a