nd?"

Augusta Maturity inclined her head.

"But the father?" she managed to ask, after a moment. "I don't wish to
pry, my dear, but does he--does he realize? Can't he help you?"

"It was Mr. Ditmar."

"Perhaps it will help you to tell me about it, Janet."

"I'd--I'd like to. I've been so unhappy since you told me he was
dead--and I felt like a cheat. You see, he promised to marry me, and
I know now that he loved me, that he really wanted to marry me, but
something happened to make me believe he wasn't going to, I saw--another
girl who'd got into trouble, and then I thought he'd only been playing
with me, and I couldn't stand it. I joined the strikers--I just had to
do something."

Augusta Maturity nodded, and waited.

"I was only a stenographer, and we were very poor, and he was rich and
lived in a big house, the most important man in Hampton. It seemed
too good to be true--I suppose I never really thought it could happen.
Please don't think I'm putting all the blame on him, Mrs. Maturity--it
was my fault just as much as his. I ought to have gone away from
Hampton, but I didn't have the strength. And I shouldn't have--" Janet
stopped.

"But--you loved him?"

"Yes, I did. For a long time, after I left him, I thought I didn't, I
thought I hated him, and when I found out what had happened to me--that
night I came to you--I got my father's pistol and went to the mill to
shoot him. I was going to shoot myself, too."

"Oh!" Mrs. Maturity gasped. She gave a quick glance of sheer amazement
at Janet, who did not seem to notice it; who was speaking objectively,
apparently with no sense of the drama in her announcement.

"But I couldn't," she went on. "At the time I didn't know why I
couldn't, but when I went out I understood it was because I wanted the
child, because it was his child. And though he was almost out of his
head, he seemed so glad because I'd come back to him, and said he'd
marry me right away."

"And you refused!" exclaimed Mrs. Maturity.

"Well, you see, I was out of my head, too, I still thought I hated
him--but I'd loved him all the time. It was funny! He had lots of
faults, and he didn't seem to understand or care much about how poor
people feel, though he was kind to them in the mills. He might have come
to understand--I don't know--it wasn't because he didn't want to, but
because he was so separated from them, I guess, and he was so interested
in what he was doing. He had ambition, he thought