wring her hands or hide her face, but only make idle marks on the brick
pavement with her tiny boots--and tremble.


"I--I had to write it," she began to reply, and her words, though they
quivered, were as mechanical as mine. "He was so--so--imprudent--my
husband's happiness required----"

I stopped her. "Please don't say that, Mrs. Fontenette. Pardon me, but--
not that, please." I felt for an instant quite cruel enough to have told
her what ebb tides she had given that husband's happiness; what he had
been so near doing and had been led back from only by the absolute
christliness of that other woman and wife, whose happiness scarcely seemed
ever to have occurred to her; but that was his secret, not mine.

She broke a silence with a suppressed exclamation of pain, while for the
eyes of possible observers I imitated her in a nonchalant pose. "You
wouldn't despise me if you knew the half I've suffered or how I've striv--
--"

I interrupted again. "O Mrs. Fontenette, any true gentleman--at thirty-
five--knows it _all--himself_. And he had better go and cut his throat
than give himself airs, even of pity, over a lady who has made a misstep
she cannot retrace."

Her foot played with a brick that was loose in the pavement, but she gave
me a melting glance of gratitude. After a considerable pause she murmured,
"I will retrace it."

"I have kept you here a good while," I said. "After a moment or so drop