up the fire." She rose from
her chair and went to the fire, and poked it up into a blaze.

"I'm afraid, Gwen, that you couldn't make it all right with Mrs. Potten,
except by----"

"By what?" asked Gwen, becoming suddenly excited. "If only Dr. Middleton
had not been away, I might have borrowed from him. Do you mean that?"

"No," said May, with a profound sigh, as she came back to the bedside.
"It was a question of honour, don't you see? You couldn't have made it
right, except by being horrified at what you had done and feeling that
you could never, never make it right! Do you understand what I mean?"

Gwen was trying to understand.

"That would have made Mrs. Potten worse," she said hoarsely.

"No," said May, with a quiet emphasis on the word. "If you had really
been terribly unhappy about your honour, Mrs. Potten would have
sympathised! Don't you see what I mean?"

"But how could I be so terribly unhappy about such a mere accident?"
protested Gwen, tearfully. "I might have returned the money. I very
nearly did twice, only somehow I didn't. It just seemed to happen like
that, and it was such a little affair."

May sat down again and put her cool hand on the girl's brow. It was no
use talking about honour to the child. To Belinda and Co. honour was,
what was expected of you by people who were in the swim, and if Mrs.
Potten had made no discovery, or had forgiven it when it was made,
Gwendolen's "honour" would have remained bright and untarnished. That
was Gwendolen's sense of the moral situation! Her vision went no
further. Still May's silence was disturbing. Gwendolen felt that she had
not been understood, and that she was being reproved by that silence,
though the reproof was gentle, very different from the kind of reproof
that would probably be administered by her mother. On the other hand,
the reproof was not merited.

"Would you," said Gwendolen, with a gulp in her throat, "would you spoil
somebody's whole life because they took some trifle that nobody really
missed or wanted, intending to give it back, only didn't somehow get the
opportunity? Would you?"

"Your whole life isn't spoiled," said May. "If you take what has
happened very seriously you may make your life more honourable in the
future than it has been. Don't you see that if what you had done had not
been discovered you might have gone on doing these things all your
life. That would have spoiled your life!"

"But my engagement!" moaned Gwen. "I