daughters a holiday during the manoeuvres;
and they made the most of it. He wanted us to go to the parade with his
family but we declined. The twins were pretty nearly the death of General
Triscoe."

Again Burnamy echoed him. "General Triscoe?"

"Ah, yes: I didn't tell you. General Triscoe and his daughter had come on
with Mrs. Adding and Rose. Kenby--you remember Kenby, On the
Norumbia?--Kenby happened to be there, too; we were quite a family party;
and Stoller got the general to drive out to the manoeuvres with him and
his girls."

Now that he was launched, March rather enjoyed letting himself go. He did
not know what he should say to Mrs. March when he came to confess having
told Burnamy everything before she got a chance at him; he pushed on
recklessly, upon the principle, which probably will not hold in morals,
that one may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. "I have a message for
you from Mr. Stoller."

"For me?" Burnamy gasped.

"I've been wondering how I should put it, for I hadn't expected to see
you. But it's simply this: he wants you to know--and he seemed to want me
to know--that he doesn't hold you accountable in the way he did. He's
thought it all over, and he's decided that he had no right to expect you
to save him from his own ignorance where he was making a show of
knowledge. As he said, he doesn't choose to plead the baby act. He says
that you're all right, and your place on the paper is open to you."

Burnamy had not been very prompt before, but now he seemed braced for
instant response. "I think he's wrong," he said, so harshly that the
people at the next table looked round. "His feeling as he does has
nothing to do with the fact, and it doesn't let me out."

March would have liked to take him in his arms; he merely said, "I think
you're quite right, as to that. But there's such a thing as forgiveness,
you know. It doesn't change the nature of what you've done; but as far as
the sufferer from it is concerned, it annuls it."

"Yes, I understand that. But I can't accept his forgiveness if I hate
him."

"But perhaps you won't always hate him. Some day you may have a chance to
do him a good turn. It's rather banale; but there doesn't seem any other
way. Well, I have given you his message. Are you going with me to get
that poem?"

When March had given Burnamy the paper at his hotel, and Burnamy had put
it in his pocket, the young man said he thought he would take some
coffee, and he asked