as
full of earnest eagerness. Even in the midst of her anxiety and pain,
Miss Gannion felt the power of its flexible modulation; and her
half-formulated condemnation of Lorimer stayed itself.

Thayer broke the silence which followed, and his accent was resonant
again.

"There's no especial use in thrashing over the past. The present is none
too good; but my question is simply in relation to the future."

"And the question is?" Miss Gannion asked.

"Whether we ought to tell Miss Dane," he answered briefly.

"It will kill her." The feminine in Margaret Gannion was uppermost once
more.

"Such wounds are more likely to mangle than to kill." Thayer spoke
grimly.

"Poor Beatrix!"

"She does love him, then? I didn't see how she could help it."

Margaret Gannion's hands shut on a fold of her skirt.

"She loves him better than she loves her life; but she loves right
better than either."

"And what is right?"

"I am not sure," she confessed weakly. "I can't seem to analyze it at
all. What do you think?"

"That she ought to be told."

"What good will it do?"

"At least, it will put her on her guard."

"Against what? From your own showing, it is like fighting an unseen
enemy. One never knows when or where it will come. She will only be put
under a terrible nervous strain, faced by a fear that will haunt her,
day and night. Besides, she might break the engagement. Have you thought
of that?"

"It was of that I was thinking. She ought to have the facts, and be
allowed to face the alternatives before it is too late. Miss Gannion,"
he turned upon her sharply; "can't you realize the pain it is to me to
be saying this? I love Lorimer, love him as one man rarely loves
another. Perhaps I love him all the more for his lack of strength. But
that is no reason I should let him make havoc of a girl's whole life,
perhaps of other lives to come. Miss Dane loves him; moreover, she is
very proud. She is bound to suffer keenly on both scores."

"Then you think--"

"That the trouble is likely to increase."

"And, if she breaks her engagement to him?"

"That it will increase all the faster. She has a strong hold on him."

"And you would run the risk of loosing this hold, when you know the
danger to your friend?"

"Yes, when I see the danger to Miss Dane."

Miss Gannion's hands unclasped, and she looked up at him with the
pitiful, drooping lips of a frightened child. Like Thayer, she too loved
Lorimer.

"It is terribl