d not give up without one bold
stroke to clear them of this accusation.

"Do you think there's anything queer about it?" she faltered.

"Queer?" To Flora's ears that sounded the coldest word she had ever
heard. "I hardly think I understand what you mean."

"I mean is it that you think there's more in what I'm asking of you than
I have said?" The two looked at each other and before that flat question
Mrs. Herrick drew back a little in her chair.

"I have no right to think about it at all," she said.

"Well, there is," Flora insisted. "There's a great deal more. I am
sorry. I should have told you, but I was afraid. I don't know why I was
afraid of you, except that in this matter I've grown afraid of every
one. It's true that there may be people going down--at least, a person.
But it isn't, as I let you think it, a house party at all. It's for
something, something that I can't do any other way--something," she had
a sudden flash of insight, "that, if I could tell you, you would believe
in, too."

Mrs. Herrick's look had faded to a mere concentrated attention. "You
mean that there is something you wish to do for whoever is going down?"

"Oh, something I must do," Flora insisted.

Mrs. Herrick considered a moment. "Why can't he do it for himself?" she
threw out suddenly.

It made Flora start, but she met it gallantly. "Because he won't. I
shall have to make him."

"You!" For a moment Flora knew that she was preposterous in Mrs.
Herrick's eyes--and then that she was pathetic. Her companion was
looking at her with a sad sort of humor. "My dear, are you sure that
that is your responsibility?"

Flora's answering smile was faint. "It seems as strange to me as it
seems absurd to you, but I think I have done something already."

"Are you sure, or has he only let you think so? We have all at some time
longed, or even thought it was our duty, to adjust something when it
would have been safer to have kept our hand off," Mrs. Herrick went on
gently.

"Oh, safer," Flora breathed. "Oh, yes; indeed, I know. But if something
had been put into your hands without your choice; if all the life of
some one that you cared about depended on you, would you think of being
_safe_?" Flora, leaning forward, chin in hand, with shining eyes, seemed
fairly to impart a reflection of her own passionate concentration to the
woman before her.

Mrs. Herrick, so calm in her reposeful attitude, calm as the old
portrait on the wall behind her,