Here now, Mag Monahan, don't you get to sneering. She was
straight--right on the level, all right. You couldn't listen to
that cracked little voice of hers a minute without being sure of
it.

I was just about to permit her graciously to pay me the
money,--for my friend? the dear Bishop's sake, of course,--when a
big floor-walker happened to catch sight of us.

"If you'll come with me, Mrs. Van Wagenen, to a dressing-room,
I'll arrange your collar for you," I said very loud. And then,
in a whisper: "Of course, I understand, but the thing may look
different to other people. And that big floor-walker there gets a
commission from the newspapers every time he tells them--"

She gave a squawk for all the world like a dried-up little hen
scuttling out of a yellow dog's way, and we took the elevator to
the second floor.

The minute I closed the door of the little fitting-room she held
out the lace to me.

"I have changed my mind," she said, "and shall give you the
lace back. I will not keep it. I can not--I can not bear the
sight of it. It terrifies me and shocks me. I can take no
pleasure in it. Besides--besides, it will be discipline for me to
do without it now that I have found it after all these years.
Every day I shall look at the place in my collection which it
would have occupied, and I shall say to myself: `Maria Van
Wagenen, take warning. See to what terrible straits a worldly