usly weaving
day-dreams round those boughs as they trembled with the ecstasy of
spring.

"You are happy to-day?" he said.

"Yes--happier than I have been for a year." She smiled mysteriously.
"I've had good news." She turned abruptly, looked him in the eyes with
that frank, clear expression--his favorite among his memory-pictures of
her had it. "There's one thing that worries me--it's never off my mind
longer than a few minutes. And when I'm blue, as I usually am on rainy
days, it makes me--horribly uncomfortable. I've often almost asked
your advice about it."

"If you'd be sorry afterward that you told me," said he, "I hope you
won't. But if I can help you, you know how glad I'd be."

"It's no use to tell Olivia," Pauline went on. "She's bitterly
prejudiced. But ever since the first month I knew you, I felt that I
could trust you, that you were a real friend. And you're so fair in
judging people and things."

His eyes twinkled.

"I'm afraid I'd tilt the scales--just a little--where you were
concerned."

"Oh, I want you to do that," she answered with a smile. "Last fall I
did something--well, it was foolish, though I wouldn't admit that to
any one else. I was carried away by an impulse. Not that I regret. In
the only really important way, I wouldn't undo it if I could--I think."
Those last two words came absently, as if she were debating the matter
with herself.

"If it's done and can't be undone," he said cheerfully, "I don't see
that advice is needed."

"But--you don't understand." She seemed to be casting about for words.
"As I said, it was last fall--here. In Saint X there was a man--and he
and I--we'd cared for each other ever since we were children. And then
he went away to college. He did several things father didn't like.
You know how older people are--they don't make allowances. And though
father's the gentlest, best--at any rate, he turned against Jack, and--"

Scarborough abruptly went to the window and stood with his back to her.

After a pause Pauline said, in a rush, "And he came here last fall and
we got married."

There was a long silence.

"It was DREADFUL, wasn't it?" she said in the tone of one who has just
made a shocking discovery.

Scarborough did not answer.

"I never realized till this minute," she went on after a while. "Not
that I'm sorry or that I don't--don't CARE--just as I always did. But
somehow, telling it out loud to some one else has made me see it