after an interval. "I had no reason for
it--not great love, or great need. I had no excuse. Or, yes, I did have
this excuse: I had been spoiled; I had been told that I was unusual,
independent, responsible to nobody. I knew that this thing existed all
about me, and if I thought of it at all, I suppose I thought that there
could be nothing so very dreadful about what men did as a matter of
course! Perhaps that's the best explanation; my mind was like a young
boy's. I didn't particularly seek out this thing, or want this thing;
but I was curious, and it came my way--

"Don't misunderstand me, Richie. I wasn't 'betrayed.' I'd had, I
suppose, as little good instruction, as little example, and watching and
guarding as any girl in the world. But I knew better! Just as every boy
knows better, and is taken, sooner or later, unawares. Of course, if I'd
been a boy--all this would be only a memory now, hardly shameful or
regrettable even, dim and far away! Especially as it lasted only a few
weeks, before I was sixteen!

"And, of course, people would say that I haven't paid the full penalty,
being a girl instead of a boy! Look at poor Tess, and Trilby, and Hetty
in 'Adam Bede!' I never let any one know it; even your aunt never would
have overlooked _that_, whatever she might say now. No; even Jim protected
me--and yet," Julia put her head back, shut her eyes, "and yet I've paid
a thousand times!" said she.

There was a long silence, and then Richard said:

"I've thought sometimes this might be it, Ju. Being alone so much, and
reading and thinking--I've worked it out in my own mind. Aunt Sanna saw
Jim in Berlin two years ago, you know, and gave him a horrible raking
over the coals, and just from what she quoted, it seemed as if there was
some secret about it, and that it lay with you. Then, of course," Richie
eased his lame leg by stretching it at full length before him, sinking
down in his chair, finger tips meeting, "of course I knew Jim," he
resumed. "Jim's pride is his weak point. He's like a boy in that: he
wants everything or nothing. He's like all my mother's children," said
Richie, comfortably analytical, "undisciplined. Chill penury never
repressed our noble rages; we never knew the sweet uses of adversity. I
did, of course, but here I am, a childless getting on in years, not apt
to leave a deep impression on the coming generation. It's a funny world,
Julie! It's a strange sort of civilization to pose under the name of