Sometimes it was one's own duty, sometimes that of another.

Must one never go forward because another steps out of one's way, voluntarily?
Besides, she might have been mistaken.

That picture, ever before her, of the woman pausing with the brush above her tongue--that little stilled gasp! It may have been but a phantasm, born of her own fevered imagination.

She clung to that, desperately.
It was the task that had been entrusted to her.

How could he hope to succeed without her.