'Smiles', page 209 by Eliot H. Robinson
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a strained imitation of her usual smile, and straightway found her thoughts scourging her because of this new deception.
It seemed to her that the day, for which she had builded so long, was tumbling about its foundations, and yet, when she now and again brought her runaway thoughts up with a round turn, she could not assign any logical reason for her feeling as she did.
"After all, what is it to me?" she would ask herself, logically, one moment. And at the next her heart would reply, "Everything. He is all that you have in the world in the way of 'family,' for he is more than friend to you." "Yes," Rose would admit, "I am afraid for him, I could not be more so if he were really my brother. She isn't worthy of him--I've known that, somehow, since the first day that he tried to tell me about her. But that isn't the point. Love is blind, and, if her faithlessness hurts him, I will hate her always. I hate her now. She has spoiled my day, and I know that I have hurt Gertrude and Philip, for they can't understand what the trouble is."
The idea passed over and over through the endless labyrinth of her brain and found no escape, while she ate the noonday meal, and later changed from her white uniform to a plain blue serge walking dress, and black sailor hat. Ever with it went the accompanying thought, "I must see her." To what end she did not know or seriously attempt to analyze. Rose was not the first to take up cudgels in a lost cause, spurred thereto by a purpose which was incapable of receiving any logical explanation. It was the "mother spirit," fighting for its own.
* * * * *
A maid opened the door on Beacon street in response to her ring, and, on entering the hall, Rose found herself face to face with Marion Treville. She was clad for the street and was at that moment in the act of buttoning a long white glove. As she recognized the visitor, a deep flush mounted quickly on the patrician face of the older woman and, for an instant, her teeth caught her