expression quickly
changed into one of understanding. It was evident that she knew what
he meant. She looked at him steadily for a moment, a moment of inner
effort in which she brought her own impulse of responsive feeling
under firmer control, before she replied:

"Wouldn't that be a barbarian sort of philosophy to live by?"

"Perhaps it would," he admitted, paused an instant, and then went on
with some heat:

"But when I think of all that you have suffered because of him, and
how little he has tried to make amends, I am so indignant that merely
refraining to be 'grateful' for such a crumb as this seems nothing to
what he deserves."

A faint color crept into her thin, pale cheeks as again she stared at
him wide-eyed.

"I know all about it," he continued, nodding at her gravely. "I know
that you would have been as straight and strong as any girl, and a
noble, capable, active woman, if he hadn't pushed you off the limb of
that apple-tree in your back yard twenty years ago, because he was
determined to have your place."

"Did he tell you about it?" she demanded, her voice trembling with
excitement. "But he must have, because nobody else, not even father or
mother, ever knew. They thought I fell."

"Yes, I know that was the version he gave of the affair, and everybody
accepted it. And you kept the truth to yourself."

"What good would it have done to blame him after it was all over? And
he didn't intend to do it."

"Yes, he did! He meant to push you off and get your place and show you
that he was boss."

"Perhaps, but he had no intention of hurting me--he didn't think that
it would."

"Oh, I know he had no murderous purpose. He just gave up to a selfish,
brutal impulse, and afterwards he was too cowardly and too selfish to
confess the truth."

She turned upon him a steady, wondering gaze and he shrank back a
little and went on more humbly:

"I suppose I ought not to speak in that way to you about your brother,
and I hope you will pardon me. But when I compare your life with his
it makes me too indignant to keep a bridle on my tongue. And, besides,
Penelope," and he leaned toward her with his manner again forceful
with the strength of his convictions, "you know as well as I do how
truthful is every word I have said."

"And even if I do," she rejoined with dignity, "it is possible that I
would not choose to admit all that my secret heart might think."

She stopped with a little start and a drawing toget