w point of view about girls and who was his own
very best pal. That was not up to her form and somehow hurt.

And she saw that it did and was deeply sorry and ashamed. Was she to
have a bad effect on every man she met? "I won't make excuses, Harry,"
she said. "They're so hopeless. But I want you to know that I sprang
into marriage before I'd given a thought to what it all meant, and I
took it as a lark, a chapter in my adventure, something that I could
easily stop and look at after I'd seen and done everything and was a
little breathless. I thought that Martin had gone into it in the same
spirit and that for the joke of the thing we were just going to play at
keeping house, as we might have played at being Indians away in the
woods. It was the easiest way out of a hole I was in and made it
possible for me not to creep back to my grandmother and take a whipping
like a dog. Do you understand?"

The boy nodded. He had seen her do things and heard her say things on
the spur of the moment that were almost as unbelievable.

His sympathy and quick perception were like water to her. And it was
indescribably good to be believed without incredulous side-looks and
suspicions, half-smiles such as Hosack would have given,--and some of
the others who had lost their fineness in the world.

"And when Martin,--who was to me then just what you are, Harry
dear,--came up to my room in his own particular natural way, I thought
it was hard luck to be taken so literally and not be left alone to find
my wings for a little. I had just escaped from a long term of
subjection, and I wanted to have the joy of being free--quite
absolutely free. Still not thinking, I sent him away and like a brick
he went, and I didn't suppose it really mattered to him, any more than
it did to me, and honestly if it had mattered it wouldn't have made any
difference because I had promised myself to hit it up and work off the
marks of my shackles and I was full of the 'Who Cares?' feeling. And
then Gilbert Palgrave came along and helped to turn my head. Oh, what a
perfect little fool I was, what a precocious, shallow, selfish little
fool. And while I was having what I imagined was a good time and seeing
life, Martin was wandering about alone, suffering from two things that
aren't good for boys,--injustice and ingratitude. And then of course I
woke up and saw things straight and knew his value, and when I went to
get him and begin all over again he wasn't mine. I'd l