ee that
she had grown quite white.

"Don't, Jacky--don't! You know _I_ can't bear it. _Why_ will you speak
of such things when I have begged you not?"

"I'm sorry, darling. I forgot. My mind was so engrossed." He laid his
hand on her shoulder as he passed, and said to me, in an apologetic
voice, "This poor child is so sensitive. The pain of the world wounds
her tender heart. I am inconsiderate in bringing my burdens to her."

The door shut behind him, and we stared at one another for a long tense
moment. I _knew_, and she knew that I knew, and suddenly the long
strain of pretending to be what she was not reached the snapping point,
and she spoke out in a burst of impotent irritation:--

"It's not true! I'm _not_ tender-hearted. They don't wound me at all,
all these sordid miserable details; they just irritate and disgust and
asphyxiate. Oh, I'm so tired of it all--so _tired_--and he doesn't see,
doesn't understand! He puts me on a pedestal, and burns incense at my
feet, and believes that I am as interested as himself, and all the
time--all the time I am smothered with boredom and impatience. I don't
know why I am saying all this to you. Yes, I do. I saw in your eyes
that you saw through me, and knew what I really felt. Now I suppose you
are horribly shocked?"

"Not a bit. I don't understand enough to judge you one way or another;
but I wish, as you have begun, you would tell me a little more. I'm
young myself, you see, so I should probably understand. Lots of people
tell me their secrets, and I'm always sorry, and very rarely shocked.
We all have our own faults. Why should we be so very hard on other
people because theirs are a different brand from our own?"

She stared at me with her big blue eyes.

"What are your faults?"

"Well," I laughed, "the list would take a long time! Shall we leave it
for another day? What I want to know now is, why, with your
temperament, did you come to marry a country parson?"

"Because I loved him, of course," came the ready reply. "He came to
take duty in our church while our own clergyman was ill, and he stayed
in our house. He was so much older than I--fifteen years--that I never
thought of him--like that! I just thought he was a dear, and liked to
talk to him, and show him about the garden, and get him to help me in
little odd ways. He was so learned and serious and staid that all the
others were in awe of him, but I ordered him about, and made him w