e," answered Susan.

"Perhaps you wouldn't look at him," Miss Amory remarked, with speculative
slowness.

"Yes, I would," said Susan, "yes I would. I couldn't trust him same as I
did before--'cause he's proved he ain't to be trusted. But if he wanted
me to marry him I couldn't hold out, Miss Starkweather."

"Couldn't you?" Miss Amory said, still speculative. "No--perhaps you
couldn't."

The girl wiped her eyes and added, slowly, almost as if she was thinking
aloud:

"I'm not one of the strong ones--I'm not one of the strong ones--no more
than little Margery was."

She said the last words with a kind of unconscious consciousness. While
she uttered them her mind had evidently turned back to other times--not
her own, but little Margery's.

Miss Amory drew a deep breath. She took up her knitting. She asked a
question.

"You knew her very well--Margery?"

Susan drew her chair closer and looked in the old face with uncertain
eyes.

"Miss Starkweather," she said, "do you think that a girl's being--like
me--would make her evil-minded? Would it make her suspicion things, and
be afraid of them--when there wasn't nothin'? I should think that it
would," quite wistfully.

"It might," answered Miss Amory, her knitting-needles flying; "but for
God's sake don't call yourself evil-minded. You'd be evil-minded if you
were _glad_ to suspect--not if you were sorry and afraid."

"Glad!" with a groan. "Oh, Lord, I guess not. But I might be all wrong
all the same, mightn't I?"

"Yes, you might."

"I loved her--oh, Lord, I did love her! I'd reason to," the girl went on,
and her manner had the effect of frightened haste. "I've suffered awful
sometimes--thinkin' in the night and prayin' there wasn't nothin'. She
was such a delicate, innocent little thing. It would have killed her."

"What were you afraid of?"

"Oh, I don't know," Susan answered, hysterically. "I don't. I only knew
she couldn't bear nothin' like--like lyin' awake nights gaspin' an'
fightin' with awful fear. She couldn't--she couldn't."

"But there are girls--women, who have to bear it," said Miss Amory. "Good
God, who _have_ to!"

"Yes--yes--yes," cried Susan. She drew her hand across her brow as if
suddenly it felt damp, and for a moment her eyes looked wild with a
memory of some awful thing. "I told her so," she said.

Miss Amory Starkweather turned in her chair with something like a start.

"You told her so," she exclaimed.

Susan stared out of the