"That I complain, then," amended Alice reproachfully. "It is because you
dismiss the _man_ and keep the--other! You may say I have no right to be
heard in this, but I'm going to complain Josie Trescott, just the same!"

This seemed to approach actual conflict, and I was frightened. Had it
been two men, I should have thought nothing of it, but with women such
differences cut deeper than with us. Josie stepped to her writing-desk
and took from it a letter.

"We may as well clear this matter up," said she, "for it has stood
between us for a long time. I think that Mr. Elkins will not feel that
any confidences are violated by my showing you this--you who have been
my dearest friends--"

She stopped for no reason, unless it was agitation.

"Are," said I, "I hope, not 'have been.'"

"Well," said she, "read the letter, and then tell me who has been
'dismissed.'"

I shrank from reading it; but Alice was determined to know all. It was
dated the day before I left New York.

"Dear Josie," it read, "I have told you so many times that I love you
that it is an old story to you; yet I must say it once more. Until that
night when we brought your father home, I was never able to understand
why you would never say definitely yes or no to me; but I felt that you
could not be expected to understand my feeling that the best years of
our lives were wasting--you are so much younger than I--and so I hoped
on. Sometimes I feared that somebody else stood in the way, and do fear
it now, but that alone would have been a much simpler thing, and of that
I could not complain. But on that fearful night you said something which
hurt me more than anything else could, because it was an accusation of
which I could not clear myself in the court of my own conscience--except
so far as to say that I never dreamed of doing your father anything but
good. Surely, surely you must feel this!

"Since that time, however, you have been so kind to me that I have
become sure that you see that terrible tragedy as I do, and acquit me of
all blame, except that of blindly setting in motion the machinery which
did the awful deed. This is enough for you to forgive, God knows; but I
have thought lately that you had forgiven it. You have been very kind
and good to me, and your presence and influence have made me look at
things in a different way from that of years ago, and I am now doing
things which ought to be credited to you, so far as they are good. As
for the ba