hen table, Martie encouraging the children, as
usual, to launch into the conversation, and laughing in quite her usual
merry manner at their observations. She took Mary into her lap,
ruffling the curly little head with her kisses, and whispering
endearments into the small ear. But Sally noticed that she was not
eating.

Later, when they had put away the hot, clean dishes, and made the
kitchen orderly for the night, Sally touched somewhat awkwardly upon
the delicate topic.

"Too bad--about Mr. Dryden," Sally ventured. Martie, at the open
doorway, gave no sign of hearing. Her splendid bronze head was resting
against the jamb, she was looking down the shabby little littered
backyard to the river. And suddenly it seemed to Sally that restless,
lovely Martie did not really belong to Monroe, that this mysterious
sister of hers never had belonged to Monroe, that Martie's well-groomed
hair and hands were as little in place here as Martie's curious
aloofness from the town affairs, as Martie's blue eyes through which
her hungry soul occasionally looked. "I'm awfully sorry for him," Sally
went on, a little uncertainly. "But what can you do? He must realize--"

"He realizes nothing!" Martie said, half-smiling, half-sighing.

"He's not a Catholic, then?"

"No. He's--nothing."

"But you explained to him? And you told him about Cliff?"

"Yes; he knew about Cliff." But Martie's tone was so heavy, and the
fashion in which she raised a hand to brush the hair from her white
forehead was so suggestive of pain, that Sally felt a little tremor of
apprehension.

"Martie--you don't--CARE, too?" she asked fearfully.

"With every fibre of my soul and body!" Martie answered, in a low,
moody voice from the doorway. "Sally--Sally--Sally--to be free!" she
went on, speaking, as Sally was vaguely aware, more for the relief of
her own heart than for any effect on her sister. "To have him free! We
always liked each other--loved each other, I think. What a life--what
joy we would have! Oh, I can't bear it. I can't bear to have the days
go by, and the years go by, and never--never see him or hear him again!
I can't help Cliff; I can't help John's wife; I can't help it if he
seems odd and boyish and different to other people--! That's what makes
him John--what he is!"

"I never dreamed it," Sally marvelled.

"I never dreamed it myself, a week ago. I always had a sort of special
feeling toward John, and I knew he had toward me. But I've been a