she was voluntarily making, for there was no outward
stress upon her to say anything. He felt again the charm of the
situation, the sort of warmth and intimacy, but he resolved not to let
that feeling offset the impartiality of his story.

"No, I don't say she threw herself on your mercy," his mother said,
finally. "She needn't have told you anything."

"Except for the reason she gave--that she couldn't make a start for
herself till she had done so. And she has got her own way to make; she
is poor. Of course, you may say her motive was an obsession, and not a
reason."

"There's reality in it, whatever it is; it's a genuine motive," Mrs.
Verrian conceded.

"I think so," Verrian said, in a voice which he tried to keep from
sounding too grateful.

Apparently his mother did not find it so. She asked, "What had been the
matter with her, did she say?"

"In her long sickness? Oh! A nervous fever of some sort."

"From worrying about that experience?"

Verrian reluctantly admitted, "She said it made her want to die. I don't
suppose we can quite realize--"

"We needn't believe everything she said to realize that she suffered.
But girls exaggerate their sufferings. I suppose you told her not to
think of it any more?"

Verrian gave an odd laugh. "Well, not unconditionally. I tried to give
her my point of view. And I stipulated that she should tell Jerusha
Brown all about it, and keep her from having a nervous fever, too."

"That was right. You must see that even cowardice couldn't excuse her
selfishness in letting that girl take all the chances."

"And I'm afraid I was not very unselfish myself in my stipulations,"
Verrian said, with another laugh. "I think that I wanted to stand well
with the postmaster."

There was a note of cynical ease in this which Mrs. Verrian found
morally some octaves lower than the pitch of her son's habitual
seriousness in what concerned himself, but she could not make it a
censure to him. "And you were able to reassure her, so that she needn't
think of it any more?"

"What would you have wished me to do?" he returned, dryly. "Don't you
think she had suffered enough?"

"Oh, in this sort of thing it doesn't seem the question of suffering. If
there's wrong done the penalty doesn't right it."

The notion struck Verrian's artistic sense. "That's true. That would
make the 'donnee' of a strong story. Or a play. It's a drama of fate.
It's Greek. But I thought we lived under another dispensa