wned herself for love of Leonard Boyce, what is there in
it? After all, what has Leonard Boyce done that he can't be forgiven?
Men are men and women are women. We've tried for tens of thousands of
years to lay down hard and fast lines for the sexes to walk upon, and
we've failed miserably. Suppose Leonard Boyce did make love to Althea
Fenimore--trifle with her affections, in the old-fashioned phrase. What
then? I'm greatly to blame. It has only lately been brought home to me.
Instead of staying here while we were engaged, I would have my last
fling as an emancipated young woman in London. He consoled himself with
Althea. When she found he meant nothing, she threw herself into the
canal. It was dreadful. It was tragic. He went away and broke with me.
I didn't discover the reason till months afterwards. She drowned
herself for love of him, it's true. But what was his share in it that
he can't be forgiven for? Millions of men have been forgiven by women
for passing loves. Why not he? Why not a tremendous man like him? A man
who has paid every penalty for wrong, if wrong there was? Blind!"

She walked about and threw up her hands and halted in front of my
chair. "I'll own that until lately I accused him of unforgivable
sin--deceiving me and making love to another girl and driving her to
suicide. I tore him out of my heart and married Willie. We won't speak
of that .... But since he has come back, things seem different. His
mother has told me that one day when he was asleep she found he was
still wearing his identification disc ... there was an old faded
photograph of me on the other side ... it had been there all through
the war .... You see," she added, after a pause during which her
heaving bosom and quivering lip made her maddeningly lovely, "I don't
care a brass button for anything that Gedge may say."

And that was all my clean-souled Betty knew about it! She had no idea
of deeper faithlessness; no suspicion of Boyce's presence with Althea
on the bank of the canal. She stood pathetic in her half knowledge. My
heart ached.

From her pure woman's point of view she had been justified in her
denunciation of Boyce. He had left her without a word. A wall of
silence came between them. Then she learned the reason. He had trifled
with a young girl's affections and out of despair she had drowned
herself .... But how had she learned? I had to question her. And it was
then that she told me the story of Phyllis and her father to