e his aunt a little note.

He was to try her yet further. While they argued this point he flashed
out with, "I ought to have told him that day when he called up to our
room. There's where I went wrong first."

"Rickie!"

"In those days I was sentimental. I minded. For two pins I'd write to
him this afternoon. Why shouldn't he know he's my brother? What's all
this ridiculous mystery?"

She became incoherent.

"But WHY not? A reason why he shouldn't know."

"A reason why he SHOULD know," she retorted. "I never heard such
rubbish! Give me a reason why he should know."

"Because the lie we acted has ruined our lives."

She looked in bewilderment at the well-appointed room.

"It's been like a poison we won't acknowledge. How many times have you
thought of my brother? I've thought of him every day--not in love; don't
misunderstand; only as a medicine I shirked. Down in what they call
the subconscious self he has been hurting me." His voice broke. "Oh, my
darling, we acted a lie then, and this letter reminds us of it and gives
us one more chance. I have to say 'we' lied. I should be lying again if
I took quite all the blame. Let us ask God's forgiveness together. Then
let us write, as coldly as you please, to Stephen, and tell him he is my
father's son."

Her reply need not be quoted. It was the last time he attempted
intimacy. And the remainder of their conversation, though long and
stormy, is also best forgotten.

Thus the first effect of Varden's letter was to make them quarrel. They
had not openly disagreed before. In the evening he kissed her and said,
"How absurd I was to get angry about things that happened last year. I
will certainly not write to the person." She returned the kiss. But he
knew that they had destroyed the habit of reverence, and would quarrel
again. On his rounds he looked in at Varden and asked nonchalantly for
the letter. He carried it off to his room. It was unwise of him, for
his nerves were already unstrung, and the man he had tried to bury was
stirring ominously. In the silence he examined the handwriting till he
felt that a living creature was with him, whereas he, because his child
had died, was dead. He perceived more clearly the cruelty of Nature, to
whom our refinement and piety are but as bubbles, hurrying downwards on
the turbid waters. They break, and the stream continues. His father, as
a final insult, had brought into the world a man unlike all the rest of
them, a man dower