my sleep, my waking.

"'From hatred, envy, and malice, and all uncharitableness, Good Lord,
deliver us.'

"Must one suffer twice for the same thing? Is it not true that we pay
but one penalty? Surely we pay either here or beyond, but not both. Oh,
not both!

"Will this ever be found? Where shall I hide it? For I have the feeling
that I must hide it, not destroy it--as the Catholic buries his sin with
the priest. My father once said that it is the healthful humiliation of
the confessional that is its reason for existing. If humiliation be a
virtue--"

I have copied the confession to this point, but I find I can not go on.
She was so merciless to herself, so hideously calm, so exact as to dates
and hours. She had laid her life on the table and dissected it--for the
Almighty!

I heard the story that night gently told, and somehow I feel that that
is the version by which Miss Emily will be judged.

"If humiliation be a virtue--" I read and was about to turn the page,
when I heard Anne in the hall. She was not alone. I recognized Doctor
Lingard's voice.

Five minutes later I was sitting opposite him, almost knee to knee,
and he was telling me how Miss Emily had come to commit her crime. Anne
Bullard was there, standing on the hearth rug. She kept her eyes on
me, and after a time I realized that these two simple people feared
me, feared for Miss Emily's gentle memory, feared that I--good
heaven!--would make the thing public.

"First of all, Miss Blakiston," said the doctor, "one must have known
the family to realize the situation--its pride in its own uprightness.
The virtue of the name, what it stood for in Bolivar County. She was
raised on that. A Benton could do no wrong, because a Benton would do no
wrong.

"But there is another side, also. I doubt if any girl was ever raised
as Miss Emily was. She--well, she knew nothing. At fifty she was as
childlike and innocent as she was at ten. She had practically never
heard of vice. The ugly things, for her, did not exist.

"And, all the time, there was a deep and strong nature underneath. She
should have married and had children, but there was no one here for
her to marry. I," he smiled faintly, "I asked for her myself, and was
forbidden the house for years as a result.

"You have heard of the brother? But of course you have. I know you have
found the books. Such an existence as the family life here was bound to
have its reactions. Carlo was a reaction. Twenty-fi