reconciliation; then, some way, she brought things around to Jerry and
me. Her face flushed up then, and she didn't meet my eyes. She looked
down at her sewing. She was very busy turning a hem _just so_.

She said there had been a time, once, when she had worried a little
about Jerry and me, for fear we would--separate. She said that she
believed that, for her, that would have been the very blackest moment
of her life; for it would be her fault, all her fault.

I tried to break in here, and say, "No, no," and that it wasn't her
fault; but she shook her head and wouldn't listen, and she lifted
her hand, and I had to keep still and let her go on talking. She was
looking straight into my eyes then, and there was such a deep, deep
hurt in them that I just had to listen.

She said again that it would be her fault; that if I had done that she
would have known that it was all because of the example she herself
had set me of childish willfulness and selfish seeking of personal
happiness at the expense of everything and everybody else. And she
said that that would have been the last straw to break her heart.

But she declared that she was sure now that she need not worry. Such a
thing would never be.

I guess I gasped a little at this. Anyhow, I know I tried to break
in and tell her that we _were_ going to separate, and that that was
exactly what I had come into the room in the first place to say.

But again she kept right on talking, and I was silenced before I had
even begun.