y good to be so sorry for me," she whispered.

He made a swift gesture of protest. "There's one thing I _can't_
stand--to see a woman suffer."

She waited a moment, as if to take in his words, and then motioned him
to the seat beside her. When she spoke again, it was slowly, as if she
were trying to concentrate her mind:

"You have known sorrow?"

"Yes."

"Tell me."

He saw that she wished to forget her own trouble for a moment in that of
another, yet the effort to obey evidently cost him much. They had both
spoken as if they two were alone in the room. Dosia, who had withdrawn
to the ottoman some paces away, out of the radius of the lamp, sat there
in her white cotton frock, leaning a little forward, her hands clasped
loosely in her lap, her face upraised and her eyes looking somewhere
beyond. So still was she, so gentle, so fair, that she might have been a
spirit outside the stormy circle in which these two communed. (In such
moments as these she prayed for Lawson.)

"I"--it was Girard who spoke at last--"my mother--Cater said once that
he'd told you something about me."

"Yes, I remember."

"I was so little when we drifted off. I didn't know how to help, how to
save anything. Yet it has always seemed to me since that I ought to have
known--I ought to have known!" His hands clenched; his voice had
subsided to a groan.

"You were her comfort when you least thought it," said Lois.

"Perhaps. I've always hoped so, in my saner moments. We stumbled along
from day to day, and slept out at night, always trying to keep away from
people, when--she thought we were going home, and that they would
prevent me." He stopped for a moment, and then went on, driven by that
Ancient Mariner spirit which makes people, once they have touched on a
forbidden subject, probe it to its haunting depths. "Did Cater tell you
how she died? She died in a barn. My _mother_! She used to hold me in
her arms at night, and make me rest my head against her bosom when I was
tired; and I didn't even have a pillow for her when she was dying! It's
one of those things you can never make up for--that you can never
change, no matter how you live, no matter what you do. It comes back to
you when you least expect it."

Both were silent for a while before Lois murmured: "But the pain ended
in happiness and peace for her. It would hurt her more than anything to
know that you grieved."

"Yes, I believe that," he acquiesced simply. "I'm glad you said