u know."

He began to speak of Stoller, first to her, but addressing himself
more and more to the intelligence of March, who let him go on without
question, and laid a restraining hand upon his wife when he saw her
about to prompt him. At the end, "That's all," he said, huskily, and
then he seemed to be waiting for March's comment. He made none, and the
young fellow was forced to ask, "Well, what do you think, Mr. March?"

"What do you think yourself?"

"I think, I behaved badly," said Burnamy, and a movement of protest
from Mrs. March nerved him to add: "I could make out that it was not my
business to tell him what he was doing; but I guess it was; I guess
I ought to have stopped him, or given him a chance to stop himself.
I suppose I might have done it, if he had treated me decently when I
turned up a day late, here; or hadn't acted toward me as if I were
a hand in his buggy-works that had come in an hour after the whistle
sounded."

He set his teeth, and an indignant sympathy shone in Mrs. March's eyes;
but her husband only looked the more serious.

He asked gently, "Do you offer that fact as an explanation, or as a
justification."

Burnamy laughed forlornly. "It certainly wouldn't justify me. You might
say that it made the case all the worse for me." March forbore to say,
and Burnamy went on. "But I didn't suppose they would be onto him so
quick, or perhaps at all. I thought--if I thought anything--that it
would amuse some of the fellows in the office, who know about those
things." He paused, and in March's continued silence he went on. "The
chance was one in a hundred that anybody else would know where he had
brought up."

"But you let him take that chance," March suggested.

"Yes, I let him take it. Oh, you know how mixed all these things are!"

"Yes."

"Of course I didn't think it out at the time. But I don't deny that I
had a satisfaction in the notion of the hornets' nest he was poking his
thick head into. It makes me sick, now, to think I had. I oughtn't to
have let him; he was perfectly innocent in it. After the letter went, I
wanted to tell him, but I couldn't; and then I took the chances too.
I don't believe he could have ever got forward in politics; he's too
honest--or he isn't dishonest in the right way. But that doesn't let
me out. I don't defend myself! I did wrong; I behaved badly. But I've
suffered for it.

"I've had a foreboding all the time that it would come to the worst, and
felt l