ords, which left him dazed.

"You are very good to me," he answered, too thoughtful of others'
feelings, as always, to blurt out--as most people would--"I don't
understand. Who are you, please?" Instead, his sightless but beautiful
eyes seemed to search the room, and he said, "Molly, you're here, aren't
you?"

Now perhaps you begin to understand why his coming, and Mrs. Beckett's
greeting of him, stopped me from telling the truth--if I would have told
it. I'm not sure if I would, in any case, Padre; but as it was I _could_
not. The question seemed settled. To have told the Becketts that I was
an adventuress--a repentant adventuress--and let them go out of my life
without Brian ever knowing they'd come into it was one thing. To
explain, to accuse myself before Brian, to make him despise the only
person he had to depend on, and so to spoil the world for him, was
another thing.

I accepted the fate I'd summoned like the genie of a lamp. "Yes, Brian,
I'm here," I answered. And I went to him, and took possession of the
hand Mrs. Beckett had left free. "I never told you about my romance. It
was so short. And--and one doesn't put the most sacred things in
letters. I loved a man, and he loved me. We met in France before the
war, and lost each other.

"Afterward he came back to fight. A few days ago he fell--just at the
time when his parents had hurried over from America to see him. I--I
couldn't resist writing them a letter, though they were strangers to me.
I----"

"That's not a word I like to hear on your lips--'strangers'," Mr.
Beckett broke in, "even though you're speaking of the past. We're all
one family now. You don't mind my saying that, Brian, or taking it for
granted you'll consent--or calling you Brian, do you?"

"Mind!" echoed Brian, with his sweet, young smile. "How could I mind?
It's like something in a story. It's a sad story--because the hero's
gone out of it--no, he _hasn't_ gone, really! It only seems so, before
you stop to think. I've learned enough about death to learn that. And I
can tell by both your voices you'll be friends worth having."

"Oh, you _are_ a dear boy!" exclaimed Mrs. Beckett. "God is good to give
you and your sister to us in our dark hour. I feel as if Jimmy were here
with us. I do believe he is! I know he'd like me to tell you what he did
with your picture, and what we've done with it since, his father and I."

Brian must have felt that it would be good for us all to talk of the