gaiety recovered, "I've forgiven him!" she declared.

"I know what you've done," said Stransom "I know what you've done
for years." For a moment they looked at each other through it all
with their long community of service in their eyes. This short
passage made, to his sense, for the woman before him, an immense,
an absolutely naked confession; which was presently, suddenly
blushing red and changing her place again, what she appeared to
learn he perceived in it. He got up and "How you must have loved
him!" he cried.

"Women aren't like men. They can love even where they've
suffered."

"Women are wonderful," said Stransom. "But I assure you I've
forgiven him too."

"If I had known of anything so strange I wouldn't have brought you
here."

"So that we might have gone on in our ignorance to the last?"

"What do you call the last?" she asked, smiling still.

At this he could smile back at her. "You'll see--when it comes."

She thought of that. "This is better perhaps; but as we were--it
was good."

He put her the question. "Did it never happen that he spoke of