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nearly drove the man mad, because she was half a mad woman herself. Finally, as I wrote you, the husband was killed, or killed himself, and she, meeting Katharine in New York by accident, was taken at once into her warm and comforting sympathy, and brought here to rest.

That was a sad morning for me, and bitterly sad for her. She was so exhausted that to leave on the morrow was out of the question, and the departure has been postponed until next week.

Bob and Katharine are mystified. I cannot remember that Bob ever showed downright serious irritation with me before.

"What have you been doing to that woman?" he said to me. "What straitlaced morality have you been preaching, anyway? Have you been telling her some tommy-rot about renouncing the world, and

that sort of thing? If you have, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Can't you see that that woman never did any human creature any harm, and never could, and that she belongs in the world, and ought to stay there just as much as Katharine? You and I would be in a pretty mess without Katharine now, wouldn't we?" So he went on with a torrent of talk absolutely unknown to him before.

"Why, my dear old Bob," I said, "how can you think that I would do anything to hurt Mrs. Billings? I am just as fond of her as you are. She has been telling me a very sad story, that's all, and I promise you I have not said a harsh word, or made any such inane suggestion about convents as you accuse me of."

In spite of the seriousness of it all, I could not help a little chuckle to myself

at Bob's expense, "They don't know

everything down in Judee!" Katharine, with that superhuman good sense that neither moth nor rust corrupts, and that some of us might steal from her to our own great profit and improvement, never said a word. She knew very well that, if there was anything to know, she would know it, and know it before anybody else, too. And I suppose she will. What that woman can accomplish when she takes down her hair, puts on her dressing-gown, and goes into another woman's bedroom, would upset the courts of Europe, if all their rulers and all their diplomats were women.

As for me, the whole position is turned topsyturvy. I have been twisted into looking upon myself as not the one to be pitied, but the one having pity to give; as not the weak and helpless one, but as the one who

must be strong and sane for one weaker than I; as not the one seeking peace and happiness for myself, but as the refuge for one in distress.

What is all this feverish, thoughtless love-making to me! What if there are loveletters that should not have been written, or tender passages that had better have been omitted! Of this other man, I know nothing, care nothing. I am sorry for him, not angry with him. He did what he should not have done, but might not I have done as much had I been in his place? In fact, I say to myself even now that I may be on the brink of a worse mistake even than his in its consequences.

Have I not condoned in you, my old friend, much the same wrong-doing? Who am I that I should weight the scales against one man, and then tip them slightly toward

another man because he is my friend, and

I believe in him.

Here now,

with my parish of two, am I

to hurt her, and defend you? Come what may, I am not of the iron mould that can bid her begone, and not try to comfort her. I think you, of all men, will agree with me in this, and share my perplexity and forgive if I make a mistake.

Sunday morning, as the bells were ringing, she came in for the first time since the morning of her confession. The family had gone to church, and I was reading over your letters, as I often do of a Sunday, and preparing to write to you. As she came in, it suddenly occurred to me that, if my confession to you of my own troubles and folly had helped you, why would it not help her to forgive herself, if I told her something of you, something of my other friend, of the

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