Since the burden
of obligation their relation imposed had been removed
Janet had analyzed her friendship, and had found it
wanting in many ways to which she had been wilfully blind
before. The criticism she had always silenced came forward
and spoke boldly; and she recognized the impossibility
of a whole-hearted intimacy where a need for enforced
dumbness existed. All the girl's charm she acknowledged
with a heart wrung by the thought that it was no longer
for her. She dwelt separately and long upon Elfrida's
keen sense of justice, her impulsive generosity, her
refined consideration for other people, the delicacy of
some of her personal instincts, her absolute sincerity
toward herself and the world, her passionate exaltation
of what was to her the ideal in art. Janet exacted from
herself the last jot of justice toward Elfrida in all
these things; and then she listened, as she had not done
before, to the voice that spoke to her from the very
depths of her being, it seemed, and said, "Nevertheless,
_no!_" She only half comprehended, and the words brought
her a sadness that would be long, she knew, in leaving
her; but she listened and agreed.
And now it seemed to her that she must ignore it again,
that the wise, the necessary, the expedient thing to do
was to go to Elfrida and re-establish, if she could, the
old relation, cost what it might.
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