necessary. I haven't the least doubt in the
world but that poor fellow was going on in perfect security, because he
felt that it would be so easy for him to give up, and supposed it would
be just as easy for her. I don't suppose he had a misgiving, and it must
have come upon him like a thunder-clap."

"Don't you think," timidly suggested Miss Cotton, "that truth is the
first essential in marriage?"

"Of course it is. And if this girl was worthy of Dan Mavering, if she
were capable of loving him or anybody else unselfishly, she would have
felt his truth even if she couldn't have seen it. I believe this minute
that that manoeuvring, humbugging mother of hers is a better woman, a
kinder woman, than she is."

"Alice says her mother took his part," said Miss Cotton, with a sigh.
"She took your view of it."

"She's a sensible woman. But I hope she won't be able to get him into
her toils again," continued Mrs. Brinkley, recurring to the conventional
estimate of Mrs. Pasmer.

"I can't help feeling--believing--that they'll come together somehow
still," murmured Miss Cotton. It seemed to her that she had all along
wished this; and she tried to remember if what she had said to comfort
Alice might be construed as adverse to a reconciliation.

"I hope they won't, then," said Mrs. Brinkley, "for they couldn't help
being unhappy together, with their temperaments. There's one thing,
Miss Cotton, that's more essential in marriage than Miss Pasmer's
instantaneous honesty, and that's patience."

"Patience with wrong?" demanded Miss Cotton.

"Yes, even with wrong; but I meant patience with each other. Marriage
is a perpetual pardon, concession, surrender; it's an everlasting giving
up; that's the divine thing about it; and that's just what Miss Passer
could never conceive of, because she is self-righteous and conceited and
unyielding. She would make him miserable."

Miss Cotton rose in a bewilderment which did not permit her to go at
once. There was something in her mind which she wished to urge, but she
could not make it out, though she fingered in vague generalities. When
she got a block away from the house it suddenly came to her. Love! If
they loved each other, would not all be well with them? She would have
liked to run back and put that question to Mrs. Brinkley; but just
then she met Brinkley lumbering heavily homeward; she heard his hard
breathing from the exertion of bowing to her as he passed.

His wife met him in th