his honorable silence in defense of his unworthy
friend.

But she herself was under no such restraint. "It isn't that," she said
quickly. "It's the reformatory--I've worried myself sick over it."

West averted his gaze; he saw that it had come, and in a peculiarly
aggravated form. He recognized at once how impossible it would be to
talk the matter over, in a calm and rational way, under such conditions
as these. This little girl had brooded over it till the incident had
assumed grotesque and fantastic proportions in her mind. She was seeing
visions, having nightmares. In a soothing, sympathetic voice, he began
consoling her with the thought that a postponement for two brief years
was really not so serious, and that--

"It isn't that!" she corrected him again, in the same voice. "That was
pretty bad, but--what I have minded so much was M---- was the _Post's_
desertion."

West's troubled eyes fell. But some hovering imp of darkness instantly
popped it into his head to ask: "Have you seen Queed?"

"No," said Sharlee, colorlessly. "Not since--"

"You--didn't know, then, that he has left the _Post?_"

"Left the _Post!_" she echoed, with a face suddenly rigid. "No! Did he?
Won't you tell me--?"

West looked unhappily at the floor. "Well--I'd much rather not go into
this now. But the fact is that he left because ... well, we had a
difference of opinion as to that reformatory article."

Sharlee turned hastily away, pretending to look for her fan. The sudden
shutting of that tiny door had shot her through with unexpected pain.
The last doubt fell now; all was plain. Mr. Queed had been discharged
for writing an article which outraged his chief's sense of honor, that
knightly young chief who still would not betray him by a word. The
little door clicked; Sharlee turned the key upon it and threw away the
key. And then she turned upon West a face so luminous with pure trust
that it all but unsteadied him.

To do West justice, it was not until his words had started caroming down
the eternal halls of time, that their possible implication dawned upon
him. His vague idea had been merely to give a non-committal summary of
the situation to ease the present moment; this to be followed, at a more
suitable time, by the calm and rational explanation he had always
intended. But the magical effect of his chance words, entirely
unexpected by him, was quite too delightful to be wiped out. To erase
that look from the tired little lady's