n personal longings that she forgets the
most serious oaths, the most binding promises, nothing can hold back her
speech. She will talk, and since this must be, let her talk now and in
my presence. But let it be briefly," he admonished her, "and with
discretion. An unnecessary word will weigh heavily in the end. You know
in what scales. You shall have just fifteen minutes."

He looked about for a clock, but seeing none drew out his watch from his
vest pocket and laid it on the table. Then he settled himself again in
his chair, with a look and gesture of imperative command towards
Georgian.

Struck with dismay, she hesitated and he had time to add: "I shall not
interrupt unless you pass the bounds where narrative ends and disclosure
begins." And Harper and Ransom, glancing up at this, wondered at his
rigidity and the almost marble-like quiet into which his restless eye and
frenzied movements had now subsided.

Georgian seemed to wonder also, for she gave him a long and piercing look
before she spoke. But once she had begun her story, she forgot to look
anywhere but at the man whose forgiveness she sought and for the
restoration of whose sympathy she was unconsciously pleading.

Her first words settled one point which up to this moment had disturbed
Ransom greatly.

"You must forget Anitra's story. It was suggested by facts in my own
life, but it was not true of me or mine in any of its particulars.
Nor must you remember what the world knows, or what my relations say
about my life. The open facts tell little of my real history, which
from childhood to the day I believed my brother dead was indissolubly
bound up in his. Though our fathers were not the same and he has
old-world blood in his veins, while I am of full American stock, we loved
each other as dearly and shared each other's life as intimately as if the
bond between us had been one in blood as it was in taste and habit. This
was when we were both young. Later, a change came. Some old papers of his
father fell into his hands. A new vision of life,--sympathies quite
remote from those which had hitherto engrossed him, led him further and
further into strange ways and among strange companions. Ignorant of what
it all meant, but more alive than ever to his influence, I blindly
followed him, receiving his friends as my friends and subscribing to such
of their convictions as they thought wise to express before me. Another
year and he and I were living a life apart,