the hearth. "What are you thinking of, you incorrigible
missionary?" he asked.

Gerty's colour rose, and her blush was for a moment her only answer.
Then she made it more explicit by saying: "I am thinking of the fact that
you and she used to be great friends--that she used to care immensely for
what you thought of her--and that, if she takes your staying away as a
sign of what you think now, I can imagine its adding a great deal to her
unhappiness."

"My dear child, don't add to it still more--at least to your conception
of it--by attributing to her all sorts of susceptibilities of your own."
Selden, for his life, could not keep a note of dryness out of his voice;
but he met Gerty's look of perplexity by saying more mildly: "But, though
you immensely exaggerate the importance of anything I could do for Miss
Bart, you can't exaggerate my readiness to do it--if you ask me to." He
laid his hand for a moment on hers, and there passed between them, on the
current of the rare contact, one of those exchanges of meaning which fill
the hidden reservoirs of affection. Gerty had the feeling that he
measured the cost of her request as plainly as she read the significance
of his reply; and the sense of all that was suddenly clear between them
made her next words easier to find.

"I do ask you, then; I ask you because she once told me that you had been
a help to her, and because she needs help now as she has never needed it
before. You know how dependent she has always been on ease and
luxury--how she has hated what was shabby and ugly and uncomfortable. She
can't help it--she was brought up with those ideas, and has never been
able to find her way out of them. But now all the things she cared for
have been taken from her, and the people who taught her to care for them
have abandoned her too; and it seems to me that if some one could reach
out a hand and show her the other side--show her how much is left in life
and in herself----" Gerty broke off, abashed at the sound of her own
eloquence, and impeded by the difficulty of giving precise expression to
her vague yearning for her friend's retrieval. "I can't help her myself:
she's passed out of my reach," she continued. "I think she's afraid of
being a burden to me. When she was last here, two weeks ago, she seemed
dreadfully worried about her future: she said Carry Fisher was trying to
find something for her to do. A few days later she wrote me that she had
taken a position as pr