for that
poor child; it would have completely justified her in her own eyes."

"Perhaps your telling her will serve the same purpose."

"Yes, I did tell her, and I am glad of it. She had a right to know it."

"Did she think Stoller's willingness to overlook Burnamy's performance
had anything to do with its moral quality?"

Mrs. March was daunted for the moment, but she said, "I told her you
thought that if a person owned to a fault they disowned it, and put it
away from them just as if it had never been committed; and that if a
person had taken their punishment for a wrong they had done, they had
expiated it so far as anybody else was concerned. And hasn't poor Burnamy
done both?"

As a moralist March was flattered to be hoist with his own petard, but as
a husband he was not going to come down at once. "I thought probably you
had told her that. You had it pat from having just been over it with me.
When has she heard from him?"

"Why, that's the strangest thing about it. She hasn't heard at all. She
doesn't know where he is. She thought we must know. She was terribly
broken up."

"How did she show it?"

"She didn't show it. Either you want to tease, or you've forgotten how
such things are with young people--or at least girls."

"Yes, it's all a long time ago with me, and I never was a girl. Besides,
the frank and direct behavior of Kenby and Mrs. Adding has been very
obliterating to my early impressions of love-making."

"It certainly hasn't been ideal," said Mrs. March with a sigh.

"Why hasn't it been ideal?" he asked. "Kenby is tremendously in love with
her; and I believe she's had a fancy for him from the beginning. If it
hadn't been for Rose she would have accepted him at once; and now he's
essential to them both in their helplessness. As for Papa Triscoe and his
Europeanized scruples, if they have any reality at all they're the
residuum of his personal resentment, and Kenby and Mrs. Adding have
nothing to do with their unreality. His being in love with her is no
reason why he shouldn't be helpful to her when she needs him, and every
reason why he should. I call it a poem, such as very few people have the
luck to live out together."

Mrs. March listened with mounting fervor, and when he stopped, she cried
out, "Well, my dear, I do believe you are right! It is ideal, as you say;
it's a perfect poem. And I shall always say--"

She stopped at the mocking light which she caught in his look, and
perceive