Yet it seems to me that you are having to pay rather more than other
people. Do sit down, dear; the other girls have gone away for the day so
we shall be entirely alone."

As if she were really too tired to stand, Gerry sank into the nearest
chair.

"I am sorry; I have not been able to sleep since Felipe was arrested. I
am told he keeps asking for me and I am not allowed to see him. He
thinks he has done me a great injustice, but that is not true and
besides I do not care."

Gerry spoke with entire self-forgetfulness.

"Mrs. Burton, I don't think you or perhaps anyone can understand,
although I have tried to make Mr. Morris see. But Felipe and I have been
perfectly miserable ever since we were married. Oh, it is not because we
do not care for each other, because we do care very, very deeply! Only
neither Felipe nor I seemed to realize the weakness and wrong of what we
were doing until we were safely out of our own country and had time to
face the truth. Then Felipe confessed to me he had been a coward. He
seemed to think that no matter what happened in our future together, I
must always think of him as a coward and compare him with other men who
had done their duty. I don't know why he did not think of all this
before. But Felipe has written me that he is almost glad he has been
arrested. Anything which may happen to him will be better than having to
live as a fugitive until the war is over. Besides, even afterwards, he
could never look another American fellow in the face, remembering his
own weakness! Can you understand how anyone could change a point of view
so quickly, Mrs. Burton?" Gerry inquired wistfully. "It is hard even for
me, and yet I realize that Felipe and I simply woke up from our selfish
dream of happiness to realizing we had been traitors and cowards."

"I can understand almost any weakness and almost any strength in human
beings, Gerry dear, after the years I have lived and the men and women I
have known," Mrs. Burton answered, forgetting for the moment Gerry's
youth. But the bitter waters of experience and regret having passed over
Gerry, she was no longer young.

Suddenly Mrs. Burton got up and began walking up and down the room with
the graceful impatience which was ever characteristic of her.

For a moment, watching her, Gerry felt her old charm so deeply that
temporarily she forgot her own sorrow. The peculiar shining quality
which Polly O'Neill had revealed as a girl in times of keen emotio