rt hammered. While absolutely certain that Persis was
aware of his aspiration, the thought of expressing it, of making a
formal offer, was distinctly terrifying. And moreover there was a
disagreeable preliminary that must receive attention, the confession of
another of those misdemeanors of his past, as irrepressible a brood as
hounded poor Macbeth. The episode dated back to his twentieth year,
when Annabel Sinclair was just waking up to the knowledge of her beauty
and the power it gave her over the susceptible sex. Thomas blushed to
recall how ignominiously he himself had capitulated.

Fate was on his side that evening. Joel was absent. Persis was kind.
She sat by the lamp stitching, and the inevitable suggestion of
comfortable domesticity was in itself an inspiration. He thanked
Heaven for her lowered gaze, confident that if he were forced to meet
her candid eyes, he should never find courage to begin.

"Persis, there's something I want to tell you. It ain't pleasant to
speak about it, but I think it's one of the things that ought to be
said before--I mean I'd be a good deal easier in my mind if you knew
all about it."

"I don't believe it's anything so very bad, Thomas," Persis said with
unaccustomed gentleness.

"Well, I don't know. She was so pretty and cute that it sort of went
to my head, but that's no excuse."

"Who was pretty?"

Persis let her work fall. Her eyes met her lover's with a challenge
that did not tend to lessen Thomas's confusion.

"Well, Persis, you've a right to know. Of course I wouldn't mention it
to anybody else. Not that she was a mite to blame," interpolated
Thomas with instinctive chivalry, "for it was all my fault from start
to finish. It--it was Stanley Sinclair's wife."

Absorbed as he was in relieving his conscience of its intolerable load,
it did not occur to Thomas to emphasize the fact that on the occasion
when he had played so culpable a part, Annabel still bore her maiden
name. It was a good two years before the dignified Stanley Sinclair
had recognized in the giddy, shallow, little beauty, the fitting mate
for his staid maturity. And that his failure to make this point clear
might lead to a serious misapprehension on Persis' part, failed to
present itself as a possibility to the honest blunderer.

"Well?" Persis' tone was crisply interrogative. "What happened?"

"Why, she looked so like a kitten, Persis, that you can't hardly help
petting, that I put my