can always go away, and lose myself."

The words "can't understand" gave Gratian a shock.

"I can understand," she said.

"You can't; you never saw him. You never saw--" her lips quivered so
that she had to stop and bite them, to keep back a rush of tears.

"Besides you would never have done it yourself."

Gratian went towards her, but stopped, and sat down on the bed. It was
true. She would never have done it herself; it was just that which,
for all her longing to help her sister, iced her love and sympathy. How
terrible, wretched, humiliating! Her own sister, her only sister, in
the position of all those poor, badly brought up girls, who forgot
themselves! And her father--their father! Till that moment she had
hardly thought of him, too preoccupied by the shock to her own pride.
The word: "Dad!" was forced from her.

Noel shuddered.

"That boy!" said Gratian suddenly; "I can't forgive him. If you didn't
know--he did. It was--it was--" She stopped at the sight of Noel's face.

"I did know," she said. "It was I. He was my husband, as much as yours
is. If you say a word against him, I'll never speak to you again:
I'm glad, and you would be, if you were going to have one. What's the
difference, except that you've had luck, and I--haven't." Her lips
quivered again, and she was silent.

Gratian stared up at her. She had a longing for George--to know what he
thought and felt.

"Do you mind if I tell George?" she said.

Noel shook her head. "No! not now. Tell anybody." And suddenly the
misery behind the mask of her face went straight to Gratian's heart. She
got up and put her arms round her sister.

"Nollie dear, don't look like that!"

Noel suffered the embrace without response, but when it was over, went
to her own room.

Gratian stayed, sorry, sore and vexed, uncertain, anxious. Her pride was
deeply wounded, her heart torn; she was angry with herself. Why couldn't
she have been more sympathetic? And yet, now that Noel was no longer
there, she again condemned the dead. What he had done was unpardonable.
Nollie was such--a child! He had committed sacrilege. If only George
would come, and she could talk it all out with him! She, who had married
for love and known passion, had insight enough to feel that Noel's love
had been deep--so far as anything, of course, could be deep in such a
child. Gratian was at the mature age of twenty. But to have forgotten
herself like that! And this boy! If she had known him, th