t was
not exactly the thing that he, a mere outsider, had the right to pry
into. An awkward silence fell between them, the sort of silence that
surely boded ill for their future harmony of intercourse. Tilly seemed
to sense this, and suddenly put her shoulder to the wheel of duty.

"I didn't get to tell grand-- I didn't get to tell Mrs. Trott, after
all." It was significant that she abruptly discarded a formerly accepted
term of endearment. "Mr. Cavanaugh was there this morning for that
purpose, so--so the greater part of her excitement was over when I got
there."

"But she was happy, of course," Joel got out, well knowing that his
remark was an empty one.

"Oh yes, of course." Tilly was silent for several minutes. Then she
added: "The poor woman is afraid that John will not forgive her. She
doesn't want help from him, she declares, and she thinks it would be
unwise for them ever again to meet face to face, but she says she would
like for him to know how sorry she is for many things. I think, myself,
Joel, that it would be inadvisable for--for them to meet, just at
present, anyway. Don't you?"

"I don't know. I can't say. I'm not in a position to decide," Joel
floundered. "It would depend on him. It is unfortunate that so many
miles separate them. He evidently has some established way of living
into which she might not fit so well. The mere fact of his being still
alive reached her by accident and through no effort on his part."

"I'm sure she has no idea of making any advancement." Tilly seemed to
Joel, as she spoke, quite another woman from the one who had been his
wife all those years, and Joel simply sat, bent forward, his every nerve
and muscle drawn taut by vast swirling forces within him.

"Then you don't think that he would--would forgive her?" asked Tilly,
with obvious anxiety which she was striving to minimize.

Joel's prompt reply surprised her. "I know he would," said Joel, "if he
knew all the circumstances. I have never known a nobler man. I don't
believe a nobler man ever lived. In trying to help his mother I was only
doing what I was sure he would have done for me under the same
conditions. If I only knew how to show him what his mother now is I'd do
it."

They were silent for a while; then, suddenly, Tilly stood behind him and
put her hands on his shoulders. "Joel," she said, "you are blue
to-night." She toyed with the hair on his brow; she bent almost as low
as when in that posture she sometim