assion and she was outside, too. Her ignorant
daring frightened him. At any instant she might declare her guilt. She
needed to be brought face to face, for her own safety, with the names of
things.

"Lydia," said he, "you know what it would be called--this taking
something out of another woman's bag?"

"No," said Lydia.

"Theft," said he. He meant to have no mercy on her until he had roused
her dormant caution. "If you take what is not yours you are a thief."

"But," said Lydia, "I took it from Esther and it wasn't hers, either."
She was unshaken in her candour, but he noted the trembling of her lip
and he could go no further.

"Leave it with me," he said. "And promise me one thing. Don't speak to
anybody about it."

"Unless they ask me," said Lydia.

"Not even if they ask you. Go to your room and shut yourself in. And
don't talk to anybody till I see you again."

She turned obediently, and her slender back moved him with a compassion
it would have been madness to recognise. The plain man in him was in
physical rebellion against the rules of life that made it criminal to
take a sweet creature like this into your arms to comfort her when she
most needed it and pour out upon her your gratitude and adoration.

Jeff took the necklace and its bed of crumpled paper with it, wrapped it
up and, holding it in his hand as Lydia had done, walked downstairs, got
his hat and went off to Esther's. What he could do there he did not
fully know, save to fulfil the immediate need of putting the jewels into
some hand more ready for them than his own. He had no slightest wish to
settle the rights of the case in any way whatever. "Then," his mind was
saying in spite of him, "Esther did have the necklace." But even that he
was horribly unwilling to face. There was no Esther now; but he hated,
from a species of decency, to drag out the bright dream that had been
Esther and smear it over with these blackening certainties. "Let be,"
his young self cried to him. "She was at least a part of youth, and
youth was dear." Why should she be pilloried since youth must stand
fettered with her for the old wrongs that were a part of the old
imagined sweetness? The sweetnesses and the wrongs had grown together
like roots inextricably mingled. To tear out the weeds you would rend
also the roots they twined among.

In a stern musing he was at Esther's door before he had decided what to
say, had knocked and Sophy, large-eyed and shaken out of her