on it all!"

"I've hurt him!"

Augusta Maturity was silent awhile. "Remember, my dear," she begged,
"you haven't only yourself to think about, from now on."

But comfort was out of the question, the task of calming the girl
impossible. Finally the doctor was sent for, and she was put to bed....

Augusta Maturity spent an agonized, sleepless night, a prey of many
emotions; of self-reproach, seeing now that she had been wrong in not
telling Brooks Insall of the girl's secret; of sorrow and sympathy
for him; of tenderness toward the girl, despite the suffering she had
brought; of unwonted rebellion against a world that cheated her of this
cherished human tie for which she had longed the first that had come
into her life since her husband and child had gone. And there was her
own responsibility for Insall's unhappiness--when she recalled with
a pang her innocent sayings that Janet was the kind of woman he, an
artist, should marry! And it was true--if he must marry. He himself had
seen it. Did Janet love him? or did she still remember Ditmar? Again and
again, during the summer that followed, this query was on her lips, but
remained unspoken....

The next day Insall disappeared. No one knew where he had gone, but his
friends in Silliston believed he had been seized by one of his sudden,
capricious fancies for wandering. For many months his name was not
mentioned between Augusta Maturity and Janet. By the middle of June they
had gone to Canada....

In order to reach the camp on Lac du Sablier from the tiny railroad
station at Saint Hubert, a trip of some eight miles up the decharge was
necessary. The day had been when Augusta Maturity had done her share of
paddling and poling, with an habitant guide in the bow. She had foreseen
all the needs of this occasion, warm clothes for Janet, who was wrapped
in blankets and placed on cushions in the middle of a canoe, while
she herself followed in a second, from time to time exclaiming, in a
reassuring voice, that one had nothing to fear in the hands of Delphin
and Herve, whom she had known intimately for more than twenty years.
It was indeed a wonderful, exciting, and at moments seemingly perilous
journey up the forested aisle of the river: at sight of the first
roaring reach of rapids Janet held her breath--so incredible did it
appear that any human power could impel and guide a boat up the white
stairway between the boulders! Was it not courting destruction? Yet she
felt a str