n heart--_because_ she
had the child!

It is not too much to say that these two hopeless women, the one outcast
of society, the other outcast of God, had brought up that child between
them. Those who say women have no secrets they can keep should have
noted this strange partnership in business, in life, in maternity! This
had gone on for twenty years, and not a soul in Spring Valley could have
told the truth of it. Don Lane did not know of it even now.

"Why, Aurora," said Miss Julia more than once in those early years to
her friend, "you must not grieve. See what God has given you--a
son!--and such a son! How glad, how proud, how contented you ought to
be. You have a son! Look at me!"

So Aurora Lane did look at Julia Delafield. They comforted one another.
It was from Miss Julia that year by year, falteringly, she learned to
hope, learned to hold up her head. Thus gradually, by the aid of the
love of another woman--a rare and beautiful thing, a wondrous thing--a
thing so very rare in that world of jealousy in which by fate women so
largely live--she got back some hold on life--she, mother of the son of
no man, at the urge of a woman who could never have a son!

"Oh, we will plan, Aurora!" said Miss Julia in those piteous earlier
times. "We will plan--we will get on. We'll fight it out together." And
so they had, shoulder to shoulder, unnoted, unpraised and unadvised,
year by year; and because they knew she had at least one friend, those
who sat in judgment on Aurora Lane came little by little to forgive or
to forget her sin, as it once was called of all the pulpits there.

And now a drunken tongue had recalled sharply, unforgivably,
unescapably, that past which had so long lain buried--a past to which
neither of them ever referred.

In all these years time had been doing what it could to repair what had
been. Time wreathes the broken tree with vines to bind up its wounds. It
covers the scarred earth with grasses presently. In all these years some
men had died, others had left the village. Certain old women, poisonous
of heart, also had died, and so the better for all concerned. Other
women mayhap had their sacrifices--and their secrets. But as for Aurora
Lane, at least she had won and held one friend. And so they two had had
between them a child, a son, a man. One had gathered of the philosophy
of life, of the world's great minds. The other had brought into the
partnership the great equipment with which Nature fo