as wanting
just to conceal anything goes. But Gerald and I"--she seemed to place
the matter before an invisible judge and jury--"never talk together of
ugly things, do we, Gerald? He's more delicate-minded by a good deal
than I am. With him particularly, though we've been such intimate
friends, I shrank from it. There's not much poetry about me, I know
that, but there'd be even less if I had to have it known all I've been
through. And since the first of our association we've always lived in a
sweet sort of world, haven't we, Gerald? I'd be ready, just the same, to
tell you the whole story any moment you wanted to hear...."

At Gerald's swift instinctive gesture, she went on without further
considering the proposition she had made. "As I said before, I don't
know what my own real front-door name is. I was born Goodwin. I married
Barton, but Barton wasn't Jim's real name. Aurora Hawthorne is what I
called myself when we were young ones and played ladies, Hat and I. I
came over here to cut loose from all the bothers that had made the last
year in Denver a nightmare. I didn't want to be connected with that
dirty mess any more in anybody's mind or my own. I wanted it to be like
taking a bath and starting new, feeling clean. Then, if I was Aurora
Hawthorne, Hattie had to be Estelle Madison, which was her name in our
old play-days. Neither of us thought of anything when we planned it but
its being a grand lark. And at first, in hotels, what did it matter? But
since we've been here and had friends, we've felt sorry more than once,
because it seemed like telling a lie. And then we were afraid of things
that might come up--just like this that has, in fact. But there wasn't
anything to do about it. Because if we confessed now most anybody would
think our reason for changing names must have been something
disgraceful, just as it happens if a person who kills another by
accident goes and hides the corpse, everybody takes it for granted it
was murder. So, if Charlie Hunt tells--"

"I'm not nearly as much afraid of his telling that you are here under an
assumed name," said Estelle, "as that you were the black crow, and it
getting to the ears of Antonia and Co."

"Well, what could they do?"

"Spoil Florence for us pretty thoroughly, I'm afraid, Nell."

"Oh, nonsense!" cried Aurora, but after a moment added in a tone of
lessened assurance, "Bother!" and after another moment burst forth, with
one hand clapped to her curly front hair