er. One day there was
a terrible wind, and it fell down. Its sap and roots were almost gone. I
felt dreadfully--about the religion, I mean. I felt, somehow, as if my
backbone had been taken out. I knew that one must have some sort of
moral ideal. I thought a great deal, and finally I determined to make my
conscience my religion. I made a resolution that I would never do, and
try not even to think, what I believed to be wrong. When I was little, I
followed Helena into a great many of her naughty escapades,--though
nothing so bad as the fire,--and I did not tell my parents, as a rule,
because I could not see that it did any good. When my New England
conscience, as Helena calls it, got the best of me and I confessed about
the fire, the consequences were so terrible that I made up my mind that
I would do as I chose and say nothing about it. I kept to that until I
lost my religion. Then I was careful about every little thing. It was
easy enough for a year. Then--I don't think I can go on."

"Then you wrote a book and your conscience hurts you because you have
not told your parents."

Magdalena dropped her reins and stared at him. Had a voice leapt down
from heaven, she could not have been more dumfounded.

"I never told you," she said helplessly. "Can all the others know too?"

"I am positive that no one suspects but myself. Do go on."

"You have guessed something, but not all. I have only begun a book; and
I am so ignorant, and my mind is so slow, that I know it will be years
before I shall be able to write a book that anybody would read. At first
this dismayed me. Now I do not care, so long as I succeed in the end;
and it will be a pleasure to see myself improve. I have not thought it
wrong not to tell my parents, so long as what I did could not affect
them in any way. Do you not think I was right in that?"

"Assuredly."

"I believed that when I had done something excellent, if that time ever
came, they would be proud of it. My mother was a school-teacher, you
know; and I did not see why my father should care. He hates to hear
women talk, but writing is different. At least I thought so. Yesterday,
just before you came, the subject came up. Rose said she believed I
could write a book, and papa was furious at the mere thought. I knew
nothing about old-world prejudices, but it seems that a lady would be
thought to have disgraced herself in Spain if she wrote a book: and papa
is as Spanish as if he had never learned a w