od as she is
have married men with plenty of means, not a--a stain on them, with
respectable friends and honorable blood-kin. But what have I done--my
God! what have I done? Sam, I've committed a crime. No matter how I
felt--how much I wanted her--I had no sort of right to her. No man has a
right to lay a filthy load like mine on unsuspecting, frail shoulders.
It is done, but if I could undo it and make her as free as she was
when--when I first saw her up there, I'd do it if it plunged me into the
eternal hell of flames her daddy believes in."

Cavanaugh's sympathies were wrung dry. He sat blinking as if every word
from his protege were a blow well aimed at him. Once he started to
speak, but his voice broke and he desisted, sitting with his arms
grimly folded, his legs awkwardly crossed, a broad, dust-coated shoe
poised in mid-air.

"Maybe I ought to have had a talk with you--_maybe_," he finally said.
"I--I prayed over it, John, but no light seemed to come to justify me in
judging anybody in the matter--not your poor, misguided mother even, for
our Lord and Saviour told us not to judge her sort. As I interpret Him,
He said them that judged was the ones that needed judgment most of all.
So on that I acted. My wife saw it a little bit different at first, but
she finally said I was right, and sanctioned it. It seems to me that
your ma is--is what she is just on the outside, anyway. The other day
out at the work, after she had said all that in hot passion, it seemed
to me that I noticed a look of shame and regret in her face, like she
realized she had gone too far. You may remember that me and her stepped
to one side just before she left, and--well, she started to cry. She did
that, John, and it meant a lot. I was seeing her with her veil off--as
you might say--I was looking beneath the paint, powder, and coming
wrinkles. You know I knew her when she was a girl. I must speak plain.
She was a beauty then, and that was her ruin, for all the hellish
designs of the sharpest of men was centered on her. Your pa was clean,
straight as a die, and loved her, but he was helpless. She loved
attention and would have it. She fell. It had to come. It meant your
pa's ruin, and it meant this blight that is on you and Tilly now; but,
my boy, I stand here as a confident witness before God Almighty and
state that nothing but good can come out of it in the long run. Peace
out of the turmoil; joy out of the shame and grief; the fragrance of