em. I had accepted her story now: it seemed simpler.
The complex part of the business was that at one moment I was simply
persuading a frightened and reluctant girl to do the straight and decent
and difficult thing, and at the next I was wasting words on an egotist
(we're all that, after all) who was subconsciously enjoying the situation
and wanting to prolong it. One feels the difference always, and it is
that duplicity of aim in seekers after advice that occasionally makes one
cruel and hard, because it seems the only profitable method.

It must have been ten minutes before I wrung out of her a faltering but
definite, 'I'll do it.'

Then I stood up. There was no more time to be wasted.

'What train can you get?' I asked her.

'I don't know.... The 7.30, perhaps.' She rose, too, her little wet
crumpled handkerchief still in her hand. I saw she had something
else to say.

'I've been so miserable ...'

'Well, of course.'

'It's been on my _mind_ so ...'

What things people of this type give themselves the trouble of saying!

'Well, it will be off your mind now,' I suggested.

'Will it? But it will still be there--the awful thing I did. I ought to
confess it, oughtn't I, and get absolution? I do make my confession, you
know, but I've never told this, not properly. I know I ought to have
done, but I couldn't get it out ever--I put it so that the priest
couldn't understand. I suppose it was awfully mean and cowardly of me,
and I ought to confess it properly.'

But I couldn't go into that question, not being entirely sure even now
_what_ she ought to confess. I merely said, 'Well, why make confessions
at all if you don't make them properly?'

She only gave her little soft quivering sigh. It was too difficult a
question for her to answer. And, after all, a foolish one to ask. Why do
we do all the hundreds of things that we don't do properly? Reasons are
many and motives mixed.

I walked with her to the King's Cross bus and saw her into it. We shook
hands as we parted, and hers was hot and clinging. I saw that she was all
tense and strung up.

'Good-bye,' she whispered. 'And thank you ever so much for being so good
to me. I'll do what you told me to-night. If it kills me, I will.'

'That's good,' I returned. 'But it won't kill you, you know.'

I smiled at her as she got on to the bus, and she smiled pitifully back.

5

I walked back to my rooms. I felt rather tired, and had a queer feeling
of having ha