id--at least not in the sense
in which you mean it. George always knew that I loved him, and that I
was true to him. He trusted me, and was justified in doing so. It wasn't
that. It was the whole thing--the whole life. There was nothing worthy
in it from the beginning to the end. I played with fire, and while
George knew it was only playing, it was fire all the same."

"But you say you were never--burnt."

"If I wasn't, others were. I led men on till they thought--till they
thought--I don't know how to say it--"

"Till they thought you should have led them further?"

"Precisely; and Bienville was one of them. It wasn't entirely his fault.
I allowed him to think--to think--oh, all sorts of things!--and then
when I was tired of him, I turned him into ridicule. I took advantage of
his folly to make him the laughing-stock of Paris; and to avenge himself
he lied. He said I had been his--No; I can't tell you."

"I understand. You needn't tell me. You needn't tell me any more."

"There isn't much more to tell that I can put into words. It was
always--just like that--just as it was with Bienville. He wasn't the
only one. I made coquetry a game--but a game in which I cheated. I was
never fair to any of them. It's only the fact that the others were more
honorable than Bienville that's kept what has happened now from having
happened long ago. It might have come at any time. I thought it a fine
thing to be able to trifle with passion. I didn't know I was only
trifling with death. Oh, if I had been a good woman, George would have
been with us still!"

"You mustn't blame yourself," the mother-in-law said, speaking with some
difficulty, "for more than your own share of our troubles. I want to
talk to you quite frankly, and tell you things you've never known. The
beginning of the sorrows that have come to us dates very far back--back
to a time before you were born."

"Oh?"

Diane's brown eyes, swimming in tears, opened wide in a sort of mournful
curiosity.

"I admit," Mrs. Eveleth continued, "that in the first hours of our--our
bereavement I had some such thoughts about you as you've just expressed.
It seemed to me that if you had lived differently, George might have
been spared to us. It took reflection to show me that if you _had_ lived
differently, George himself wouldn't have been satisfied. The life you
led was the one he cared for--the one I taught him to care for. The
origin of the wrong has to be traced back to me."