that
Philip was the dearest thing in the world to you!"

Jacqueline answered, "Mother, I love Philip now better than I ever
dreamed it was possible to love any one. But--It does not make you
exactly happy to feel that way about a man who--who doesn't know you're
there, unless you remind him."

"Jacqueline! Philip does not love you--?"

"He tries his best to," said the girl with a hopeless little smile, "but
he can't. Oh, it's quite true!"--she stopped her mother's protest by a
gesture. "I knew it before I married him. Jemmy told me--Oh, do you
think I would have done such a thing, do you dream I would have accepted
such a sacrifice, if I had seen anything else to do? If I had guessed
that Mr. Channing really wanted me?--I belonged to Mr. Channing,
Mother.--Now do you see what you have done?"

Kate had risen, too, her hands shaking. A strange and appalling thought
had forced itself into her head. She asked in a sort of whisper,
"Daughter, _why did you marry Philip_?"

The answer came with a terrible simplicity, "Because I did not want to
be like Mag Henderson. Because I thought--if a baby came--you never can
tell--it would be better to have a father for it."

In the silence that followed, innumerable little familiar home-sounds
came to Kate's ears; the crackling of a log in the fire, a negro voice
out of doors calling "Soo-i, soo-i," to the pigs, Big Liza in the
distant kitchen chanting a revival hymn while she washed the dishes. Her
eyes in that one moment took in, as do the eyes of a drowning person,
every detail of her surroundings; the sturdy masculine furniture covered
incongruously with its wedding cretonne, the piano and books that had
been a part of her childhood's home, her open office beyond, with its
business-like array of maps and ledgers; and all these things seemed to
accuse her of something, of being a traitor to some trust. Her eyes came
to rest at last upon the old flintlock rifle over the mantel-shelf,
beneath the wooden, grim-faced Kildare who had carried it.

"And I did not kill him!" she muttered aloud, as if in apology to the
rifle.

Jacqueline, who had been watching her fearfully, ran with a little cry
and clung to her close.

"Mummy, don't look like that, don't stare so queerly! You frighten me,"
she wailed. "Didn't you guess--didn't you understand, when I told you
how I adored him? I--I thought you would. How could I help it? I didn't
know--I--Oh, Mummy!"

Kate with a gesture brushed