oice about you
till we thought you must be some stately, tall, splendid Helen of Troy
with a soul like an ocean, instead of"--she was going to say something
that would have seemed unkind, and she stopped herself in time--"instead
of a sort of fairy, one of the little folk that never grow up; the same
as my father used to tell me about."

"You think very badly of me, then?" returned the other with a sigh. Her
courage, her pride, her attempt to control the situation had vanished
suddenly, and she became for the moment almost the child she looked.

"We've only just begun. We're all his friends here, and we'll judge
you and think of you according to what happens between you and him. You
wrote him that letter!"

She suddenly placed her hand on the desk as the inspiration came to her
to have this matter of the letter out now, and to have Mrs. Crozier
know exactly what the position was, no matter what might be thought of
herself. She was only thinking of Shiel Crozier and his future now.

"What letter did I write?" There was real surprise and wonder in her
tone.

"That last letter you wrote to him--the letter in which you gave him
fits for breaking his promise, and talked like a proud, angry angel from
the top of the stairs."

"How do you know of that letter? He, my husband, told you what was in
that letter; he showed it to you?" The voice was indignant, low, and
almost rough with anger.

"Yes, your husband showed me the letter--unopened."

"Unopened--I do not understand." Mona steadied herself against the foot
of the bed and looked in a helpless way at Kitty. Her composure was
gone, though she was very quiet, and she had that look of a vital
absorption which possesses human beings in crises of their lives.

Suddenly Kitty took from behind a book on the shelf a key, opened the
desk, and drew out the letter which Crozier had kept sealed and unopened
all the years, which he had never read.

"Do you know that?" Kitty asked, and held it out for Mrs. Crozier to
see.

Two dark blue eyes stared confusedly at the letter--at her own
handwriting. Kitty turned it over. "You see it is closed as it was when
you sent it to him. He has never opened it. He does not know what is in
it."

"He has-kept it--five years--unopened," Mona said in broken phrases
scarce above a whisper.

"He has never opened it, as you see."

"Give--give it to me," the wife said, stepping forward to stay Kitty's
hand as she opened the lid of the desk