"You wouldn't lie to me, Edith?"

"No. I'm telling you. I've been married a long time. You--don't you
worry, mother. You just lie there and quit worrying. It's all right."

There was a sudden light in the sick woman's eyes, an eager light that
flared up and died away again.

"Who to?" she asked. "If it's some corner loafer, Edie--" Edith had
gained new courage and new facility. Anything was right that drove the
tortured look from her mother's eyes.

"You can ask him when he comes home this evening."

"Edie! Not Willy?"

"You've guessed it," said Edith, and burying her face in the bed
clothing, said a little prayer, to be forgiven for the lie and for all
that she had done, to be more worthy thereafter, and in the end to earn
the love of the man who was like God to her.

There are lies and lies. Now and then the Great Recorder must put one
on the credit side of the balance, one that has saved intolerable
suffering, or has made well and happy a sick soul.

Mrs. Boyd lay back and closed her eyes.

"I haven't been so tickled since the day you were born," she said.

She put out a thin hand and laid it on the girl's bowed head. When Edith
moved, a little later, her mother was asleep, with a new look of peace
on her face.

It was necessary before Ellen saw her mother to tell her what she had
done. She shrank from doing it. It was one thing for Willy to have done
it, to have told her the plan, but Edith was secretly afraid of Ellen.
And Ellen's reception of the news justified her fears.

"And you'd take him that way!" she said, scornfully. "You'd hide behind
him, besides spoiling his life for him! It sounds like him to offer, and
it's like you to accept."

"It's to save mother," said Edith, meekly.

"It's to save yourself. You can't fool me. And if you think I'm going to
sit by and let him do it, you can think again."

"It's as good as done," Edith flashed. "I've told mother."

"That you're going to be, or that you are?"

"That we are married."

"All right," Ellen said triumphantly. "She's quiet and peaceful now,
isn't she? You don't have to get married now, do you? You take my
advice, and let it go at that."

It was then that Edith realized what she had done. He would still marry
her, of course, but behind all his anxiety to save her had been the real
actuating motive of his desire to relieve her mother's mind. That was
done now. Then, could she let him sacrifice himself for her?

She could. She coul