er been in her life she
had only to look at me without protestation. "It's Linda's standard. God
knows I myself could get on! She's ambitious, luxurious, determined to
have what she wants--more 'on the make' than any one I've ever seen.
Of course it's open to you to tell me it's my own fault, that I was
so before her and have made her so. But does that make me like it any
better?"

"Dear Mrs. Pallant, you're wonderful, you're terrible," I could only
stammer, lost in the desert of my thoughts.

"Oh yes, you've made up your mind about me; you see me in a certain way
and don't like the trouble of changing. Votre siege est fait. But you'll
HAVE to change--if you've any generosity!" Her eyes shone in the summer
dusk and the beauty of her youth came back to her.

"Is this a part of the reparation, of the expiation?" I demanded. "I
don't see what you ever did to Archie."

"It's enough that he belongs to you. But it isn't for you I do it--it's
for myself," she strangely went on.

"Doubtless you've your own reasons--which I can't penetrate. But can't
you sacrifice something else? Must you sacrifice your only child?"

"My only child's my punishment, my only child's my stigma!" she cried in
her exaltation.

"It seems to me rather that you're hers."

"Hers? What does SHE know of such things?--what can she ever feel? She's
cased in steel; she has a heart of marble. It's true--it's true," said
Louisa Pallant. "She appals me!"

I laid my hand on my poor friend's; I uttered, with the intention of
checking and soothing her, the first incoherent words that came into my
head and I drew her toward a bench a few steps away. She dropped upon
it; I placed myself near her and besought her to consider well what she
said. She owed me nothing and I wished no one injured, no one denounced
or exposed for my sake.

"For your sake? Oh I'm not thinking of you!" she answered; and indeed
the next moment I thought my words rather fatuous. "It's a satisfaction
to my own conscience--for I HAVE one, little as you may think I've a
right to speak of it. I've been punished by my sin itself. I've been
hideously worldly, I've thought only of that, and I've taught her to be
so--to do the same. That's the only instruction I've ever given her, and
she has learned the lesson so well that now I see it stamped there in
all her nature, on all her spirit and on all her form, I'm horrified at
my work. For years we've lived that way; we've thought of nothing e