I didn't want to do her any harm if I could help it. I was
ashamed, afterward; when you said you didn't like children I was
afraid."

"Afraid I'd leave you?"

"Yes."

He stopped, the simplicity of her answers removing a part of the
suspicion of artful duplicity which had originally weighed upon him.
After all, there was not so much of that in it as mere wretchedness of
circumstance and cowardice of morals. What a family she must have!
What queer non-moral natures they must have to have brooked any such a
combination of affairs!

"Didn't you know that you'd be found out in the long run?" he at
last demanded. "Surely you might have seen that you couldn't raise her
that way. Why didn't you tell me in the first place? I wouldn't have
thought anything of it then."

"I know," she said. "I wanted to protect her."

"Where is she now?" he asked.

Jennie explained.

She stood there, the contradictory aspect of these questions and of
his attitude puzzling even herself. She did try to explain them after
a time, but all Lester could gain was that she had blundered along
without any artifice at all--a condition that was so manifest
that, had he been in any other position than that he was, he might
have pitied her. As it was, the revelation concerning Brander was
hanging over him, and he finally returned to that.

"You say your mother used to do washing for him. How did you come
to get in with him?"

Jennie, who until now had borne his questions with unmoving pain,
winced at this. He was now encroaching upon the period that was by far
the most distressing memory of her life. What he had just asked seemed
to be a demand upon her to make everything clear.

"I was so young, Lester," she pleaded. "I was only eighteen. I
didn't know. I used to go to the hotel where he was stopping and get
his laundry, and at the end of the week I'd take it to him again."

She paused, and as he took a chair, looking as if he expected to
hear the whole story, she continued: "We were so poor. He used to give
me money to give to my mother. I didn't know."

She paused again, totally unable to go on, and he, seeing that it
would be impossible for her to explain without prompting, took up his
questioning again--eliciting by degrees the whole pitiful story.
Brander had intended to marry her. He had written to her, but before
he could come to her he died.

The confession was complete. It was followed by a period of five
minutes, in which Lester