s conscious that she must choose
between two risks. She had had a secret and the secret was gone. Owen
had one, which was still unbruised, and the greater risk now was that
his mother should lay her formidable hand upon it. All Fleda's
tenderness for him moved her to protect it; so she faced the smaller
peril. "Their delay," she brought herself to reply, "may perhaps be
Mona's doing. I mean because he has lost her the things."

Mrs. Gereth jumped at this. "So that she'll break altogether if I keep
them?"

Fleda winced. "I've told you what I believe about that. She'll make
scenes and conditions; she'll worry him. But she'll hold him fast;
she'll never give him up."

Mrs. Gereth turned it over. "Well, I'll keep them, to try her," she
finally pronounced; at which Fleda felt quite sick, as if she had given
everything and got nothing.

XII

"I must in common decency let him know that I've talked of the matter
with you," she said to her hostess that evening. "What answer do you
wish me to write to him?"

"Write to him that you must see him again," said Mrs. Gereth.

Fleda looked very blank. "What on earth am I to see him for?"

"For anything you like."

The girl would have been struck with the levity of this had she not
already, in an hour, felt the extent of the change suddenly wrought in
her commerce with her friend--wrought above all, to that friend's view,
in her relation to the great issue. The effect of what had followed
Owen's visit was to make that relation the very key of the crisis.
Pressed upon her, goodness knew, the crisis had been, but it now seemed
to put forth big, encircling arms--arms that squeezed till they hurt and
she must cry out. It was as if everything at Ricks had been poured into
a common receptacle, a public ferment of emotion and zeal, out of which
it was ladled up to be tasted and talked about; everything at least but
the one little treasure of knowledge that she kept back. She ought to
have liked this, she reflected, because it meant sympathy, meant a
closer union with the source of so much in her life that had been
beautiful and renovating; but there were fine instincts in her that
stood off. She had had--and it was not merely at this time--to recognize
that there were things for which Mrs. Gereth's _flair_ was not so happy
as for bargains and "marks." It wouldn't be happy now as to the best
action on the knowledge she had just gained; yet as from this moment
they were still