at the end of the room swayed a little and Archie walked
back and glanced into the dining-room. He nodded reassuringly and she
indicated a seat a little nearer than the one he had left.

"Please don't be alarmed, but it's a singular fact that I know you; we
met once, passingly, at a tea in Cambridge; it's a good while ago and we
exchanged only a word, so don't try to remember. I much prefer that you
shouldn't." Archie didn't remember; he had attended many teas at
Cambridge during commencement festivities and had always hated them. "It
was not until we were at the table that I placed you tonight. I'm
telling you this," she went on, "not to disturb you but to let you know
that I'm relieved, infinitely relieved to know that you are with my
brother. How it came about is none of my affair. But you are a
gentleman; in the strange phase through which"--her lips formed to speak
a name but she caught herself up sharply--"through which he is passing
I'm gratified that he has your companionship. I want you to promise to
be kind to him, and to protect him so far as possible. I only know
vaguely--I am afraid to surmise--how he spends his time; this is my
first glimpse of him in a year, and for half a dozen years I have met
him only in some such way as this. You have probably questioned his
sanity; that would be only natural, but there is no such excuse for him.
Once something very cruel happened to him; something that greatly
embittered him, a very cruel, hard thing, indeed; and after the first
shock of it--" She turned her head slightly and her lips quivered.

"That is all," she said, and faced him again with her beautiful repose
accentuated, her perfect self-control that touched him with an infinite
pity. She was superb, and he had listened with a shame deepened by the
consciousness that, remembering him from a chance meeting, she
attributed to him an honor and decency he had relinquished, it seemed
to him, in some state of existence before the dawn of time. What she
knew or did not know about her brother was not of importance; it was the
assumption that he was capable of exercising an influence upon the man,
protecting and saving him from himself that hurt, hurt with all the
poignancy of physical pain. She did not dream that she had got the whole
thing upside-down; that if the Governor was a social pariah he himself
was no whit better, and had thrown himself upon the Governor's mercy.

"I shall do what I can," he said. "You can