ing weighing on her mind, something
depressing her."

"Ah!" Bristow said with deeper interest. "That's just what we want to
find out about."

Mrs. Allen sat silent for a moment pursing her lips.

Bristow let her reflect.

"I don't think," she said at last, "Mrs. Withers ever was in fear of
anybody or any thing. She wasn't that kind."

"Did she ever tell you anything to make you think that she wasn't happy?"

"I was trying to recall just what it was. Once, I remember, when she was
sitting out on the sleeping porch--she sometimes came out there to talk
to my husband, who is always in bed--we had been discussing the care with
which every woman had to live her life.

"'Women are like politicians,' Mr. Allen said. 'They can't afford to have
a dark spot in their past. If they do, somebody will drag it out.'

"At that Mrs. Withers cried out:

"'Oh! how awfully true that is! And how unfair! It never seems to matter
with men, but with women it means heaven, or the other thing. I wish
I knew----' She broke off with a gasp, and I saw her lip tremble.

"It was funny, but at the time I thought she was referring to her sister,
not to herself."

"What made you think that?"

"I don't know. I had no real reason for it. Perhaps it was just because
unhappiness seemed so foreign to Mrs. Withers herself."

"Was there anything else?"

"Once, when I ran into Number Five, I found her crying. She was in the
living room, all doubled up in a rocking chair, crying silently."

"Did she say why?"

"No; but, while I was trying to soothe her, she said, 'Life's so
hard--it's so hard to straighten out a tangle when once you've made it.
If one could just go back and do things over again!' When I asked her if
I could help her, she said I couldn't. 'Nobody can,' she sobbed out on my
shoulder. 'It doesn't concern me alone. I'll have to fight it out the
best way I can.'"

Bristow was greatly interested.

"What did you conclude from all that, Mrs. Allen?" he asked.

"My impression was very vague," Mrs. Allen returned frankly. "I don't
think it is of much value now. I got, somehow, the idea that there was in
her life something which she had to conceal, something which might at any
moment be discovered. I thought she was worrying about its effect on her
husband. Of course, though, that was just my idea."

"I see. Now, just one other thing: what did you think, what do you think,
of Miss Fulton?"

"Oh, merely that she's bad-tempered and