Vane: twins already. She's a horrible example. Why do
people always have to have children--"

She stopped, abruptly, herself stricken at the stricken look in the
other's face. "Oh, Jinny, darling Jinny," she gasped; "I forgot! Your
baby. Your little, dead baby! I'm a fool; a poor little silly fool,
chattering of realities that I know nothing about."

"You will know some day, my dear," said the other woman, smiling
valiantly. "Don't deny the greatest reality of all, when it comes. Are
you sure you're not denying it now?"

The sunbeams crept and sparkled, like light upon ruffled waters, across
Esme's obstinately shaken head.

"Perhaps you couldn't help hurting him. But be sure you aren't hurting
yourself, too."

"That's the worst of it," said the girl, with one of her sudden accesses
of sweet candor. "I needn't have hurt him at all. I was stupid." She
paused in her revelation. "But he was stupider," she declared
vindictively; "so it serves him right."

"How was he stupider?"

"He thought," said Esme with sorrowful solemnity, "that I was just as
bad as I seemed. He ought to have known me better."

The older woman bent and laid a cheek against the sunny hair. "And
weren't you just as bad as you seemed?"

"Worse! Anyway, I'm afraid so," said the confessional voice, rather
muffled in tone. "But I--I just got led into it. Oh, Jinny, I'm not
awfully happy."

Mrs. Willard's head went up and she cocked an attentive ear, like an
expectant robin. "Some one outside," said she. "I'll be back in a
moment. You sit there and think it over."

Esme curled back on the divan. A minute later she heard the curtains
part at the end of the dim room, and glanced up with a smile, to face,
not Jeannette Willard, but Hal Surtaine.

"You 'phoned for me, Lady Jinny," he began: and then, with a start,
"Esme! I--I didn't expect to find you here."

"Nor I to see you," she said, with a calmness that belied her beating
heart. "Sit down, please. I have something to tell you. It's what I
really came to the office to say."

"Yes?"

"About Kathleen Pierce."

Hal frowned. "Do you think there can be any use--"

"Please," she begged, with uplifted eyes of entreaty. "She--she didn't
tell me the truth about that interview with your reporter. It was true;
but she made me think it wasn't. She confessed to me, and she feels very
badly. So do I. I believed that you had deliberately made that up, about
her saying that she didn't turn back becaus