them from listless
fingers and walked sedately down to the house once more.

On this morning she did not even care to play. She went into the parlor
and touched a few notes, but her heart was heavy and sad. Life was growing
too complex.

Last week there had come a letter from Harry Temple. It had startled her
when it arrived. She feared it was some ill-news about David, coming as it
did from New York and being written in a strange hand.

It had been a plea for forgiveness, representing that the writer had
experienced nothing but deep repentance and sorrow since the time he had
seen her last. He set forth his case in a masterly way, with little
touching facts of his childhood, and lonely upbringing, with no mother to
guide. He told her that her noble action toward him had but made him
revere her the more, and that, in short, she had made a new creature of
him by refusing to return his kiss that day, and leaving him alone with so
severe a rebuke. He felt that if all women were so good and true men would
be a different race, and now he looked up to her as one might look up to
an angel, and he felt he could never be happy again on this earth until he
had her written word of forgiveness. With that he felt he could live a new
life, and she must rest assured that he would never offer other than
reverence to any woman again. He further added that his action had not
intended any insult to her, that he was merely expressing his natural
admiration for a spirit so good and true, and that his soul was innocent
of any intention of evil. With sophistry in the use of which he was an
adept, he closed his epistle, fully clearing himself, and assuring her
that he could have made her understand it that day if she had not left so
suddenly, and he had not been almost immediately called away to the dying
bed of his dear cousin. This contradictory letter had troubled Marcia
greatly. She was keen enough to see that his logic was at fault, and that
the two pages of his letter did not hang together, but one thing was
plain, that he wished her forgiveness. The Bible said that one must
forgive, and surely it was right to let him know that she did, though when
she thought of the fright he had given her it was hard to do. Still, it
was right, and if he was so unhappy, perhaps she had better let him know.
She would rather have waited until David returned to consult him in the
matter, but the letter seemed so insistent that she had finally written a