I was about to say that once or twice I
have found him something less than fair to me. To others--" But here he
paused again, remembering that morning's conversation on the hill.

"I do not much believe," persisted Vashti, "in men who act justly so
long as they are not thwarted.... But you would remind me no doubt
that, if questions are to be asked and answered this morning, it is I
who should be giving an account of myself. Well, then, I have come to
the Islands with a little plan of campaign in my mind, and last night
it occurred to me suddenly that you were the very person to help. I
am--you will excuse my telling you this, but it is necessary--a
passably rich woman; that is to say, I have more money than I want to
spend on myself, after putting by enough for a rainy day; and I can
earn more again if I want more. I have no 'encumbrances,' as foolish
people put it; no relatives in the world but my sister Ruth and her
children. No two sisters ever loved one another better than did Ruth
and I. We lost our mother early, when Ruth was just three years old,
and from then until she was a grown woman I had the mothering of her,
being by five years the elder. You have seen something like it, I dare
say, in other poor families where the mother has been taken; but I tell
you again that never were pair more absolutely wrapped up in one
another than were Ruth and I. We shared each other's thoughts by day,
we slept together and shared each other's dreams. Oh!"--Vashti clasped
her hands and looked up with brimming eyes--"I can see now how
beautiful it all was."

The Commandant bowed his head gravely. "I can believe it," he said; and
as if he had stepped back fifteen years he found himself standing again
on the hill and looking in upon the fire-lit room--only now the picture
and the two figures in it shone with divine meaning.

"I know what you would ask," she went on. "Why, then, you would ask,
did I ever leave the Islands?... But this had always been understood
between us. I cannot tell you how. For years we never talked about it,
yet we always talked as if, some day, it must happen. The fate was on
us to be separated; and the strange part of it was," continued Vashti,
throwing out her hands involuntarily, and with this action changing as
it were from a confident woman back to a child helpless before its
destiny, "we understood from the first that I, who loved the Islands,
must be the one to go, while Ruth would find a husband h