She sat down beside him, covering his hands with her own. "She's all right, Thor dear ... now ... and I don't think she'll be any the worse for it in the end.... She may be the better.... We can't tell yet....

But--but you haven't heard it in the village, have you?"

He shook his head, perhaps because he was dazed, perhaps because he didn't trust himself to speak.

"That's good." She spoke breathlessly. "I was so afraid you might ... I wanted to tell you myself ... so that you wouldn't--you wouldn't get a shock.... There's no reason for a shock--not now, Thor.... It's only--it's only ... just what I was afraid of--what I spoke of at lunch.... She--she--she did it."

He found strength to speak. "She did--what?"

Lois continued the same breathless way. "She threw herself into the pond.... But she's all right.... Jim Breen and Robbie Willert were out in a boat--fishing.... They saw her.... They got to her just as she went down the second time.... Jim Breen dived after her and brought her up.... She wasn't unconscious very long ... and fortunately Dr. Hill was close by--at old Mrs. Jukes's in Schoolhouse Lane.... So she's home now and all right, or nearly.... I arrived just as they were bringing her ash.o.r.e.... She was breathing then.... I went on before them to the house.... I told Mrs. Fay ... and Mr. Fay.... I saw them put her to bed.... She's all right.... And then I came here--to tell you, Thor--"

He struggled to his feet, throwing his head back and clenching his fists. "I swear to G.o.d that if I ever see Claude again I'll--I'll kill him!"

Without rising she caught one of his hands and pulled him downward. "Sit down, Thor," she said, in a tone of command. "You mustn't take it like that. You mustn't make things worse than they are. They're bad enough as it is. They're so bad--or at least so hard for--for some of us--that we must do everything we can to make it possible to bear them."

He sat down at her bidding; but with elbows resting on the table he covered his face with his hands. She clasped her own and sat looking at him. That is, she sat looking at his strong knuckles and at the shock of dark hair that fell over the finger-tips where the nails dug into his forehead. She felt a great pity for him; but a pity that permitted her to sit there, watchful, detached, not as if it was Thor--but some one else.

There would be an end now to silences and concealments. She saw that already. He was making no further attempt to keep her in the dark. In the shock of the moment all the barricades he had built around his secret life had fallen like the walls of Jericho. She had nothing to do but walk upward and inward and take possession. All was open. There was neither shrine nor sanctuary any longer. It was no privilege to be admitted thus; anybody would have been admitted who sat beside him as she was sitting now.

But in the end the paroxysm pa.s.sed and his hands came down.

"I know it's hard for you, Thor--" The eyes he turned on her were full of such unspeakable things that she stopped. She was obliged to wait till he looked away again before she could go on. "I know it's hard for you, Thor. It's hard for--for us all. But my point is that bitterness or violence will only make it worse. You must remember--I feel that I _must_ remind you of it--that you're not the--not the only sufferer."

He bowed his head into his hands again, but without the mad anguish of a few minutes earlier.

"Where so much is intolerable," she pursued, "what we have to do--each one of us--is to see how tolerable we can make things for every one else."

He raised his head for one quick, reproachful glance. "Do you mean tolerable for--for Claude?"

"Yes, I do mean for Claude. _We_ sha'n't have to punish him."

He gave her another look. "Then what have we got to do?"

"Nothing that isn't kind--and well thought out beforehand. That's really the important thing. When one can't move without hurting some one, isn't it better not to move at all?"

It was the old doctrine of tarrying the Lord's leisure against which his instincts were still in revolt. His indignation was such that he could partially turn and face her. "Do you mean to say that we should _let_ him abandon her--_now_?"

She laid her hand on his arm. "Oh, Thor dear, it isn't for us to let--or prevent--or anything. We can't drive other people--and it's only to a slight degree that we can lead them. Even I know that. What we can do best is to follow--and pick up the pieces."

He shook his head blankly. "I don't understand. What good would that do?"

She rose, saying quietly, "I shall have to let you think it out for yourself."

As he remained seated, his forehead resting on his hand, she pa.s.sed behind him. With her arm thrown lightly across his shoulders she bent over him till her cheek touched his hair. "Thor dear," she whispered, "we've got our own problems to solve, haven't we? We can't solve Claude's and Rosie's too. No one can do that but themselves. Whatever happens--whether he comes back and marries her, or whether he doesn't--no help would ever come of your interference or mine. If we'd only understood that before--"

"You mean, if I had."

"Well, Thor darling, you haven't. You see, human beings are so terribly free. I say terribly, on purpose--because you can't compel them to be wise and prudent and safe, even when they're making the most obvious mistakes. We must let them make them--and suffer--and learn." She bent closer to his ear. "And it's what we must do, Thor dear, you and I.

We've made our mistakes already--though perhaps we didn't know it. Now we must have the suffering--and--and the learning."

She brushed her lips lightly across his hair and left him.

As she walked through the Square, and past the terminus of the tram-line, and on into the beginning of County Street, she was obliged to keep repeating her own words--"Nothing that isn't kind and well thought out beforehand." Having counseled him against bitterness and violence, she saw that her immediate task was not to swallow her own words. Bitterness was beyond suppression, and violence would have been so easy! "_Well thought out beforehand_," she emphasized. "Whatever I do I must keep to that. If _I_ don't, G.o.d knows where we shall be."

In pursuance of this principle she turned in at her father-in-law's gate. He and Mrs. Masterman must also be warned. Rosie's rash act would touch them so closely that unless they were informed of it gently something regrettable might be said or done.

As to that, however, her fears proved groundless. Masterman himself opened the door for her as she went up the steps. "Saw you coming," he explained. "Just got out from town. Ena's been telling me the most distressing thing--the most d.a.m.nably theatrical, idiotic thing. Perhaps you've heard of it."

"I know what you mean. I've been there. I was there when they brought her ash.o.r.e. It may have been idiotic, as you say, but I don't think it was theatrical."

"You will when you know. Ena," he called up the stairs after they had entered the hall; "Lois is here. Come down."

Mrs. Masterman entered the library a minute later with both hands outstretched. "Oh, my dear, what a comedy this is!" It was not often that her manner forsook its ladylike suavity. "_What_ a comedy! But of course you don't know. n.o.body knows, thank G.o.d! But we must tell _you_."

She turned to her husband. "Will you tell her, Archie, or shall I?"

"If it's about Claude and Rosie Fay," Lois said, when they had got seated, "I know all that. Thor told me. He told me yesterday, because--well, because I'd been taking an interest in Rosie for some months past, and when I went to see her yesterday afternoon old Mr. Fay wouldn't let me. He said there'd been trouble--or something--between Claude and Rosie--"

"Oh, he's been so romantic, poor boy," Ena interrupted, "and so loyal.

You'd hardly believe. He's been taken in completely. He _did_ want to marry her. That's true. There's no use denying it. He told his father and he told me. Oh, you've no idea. We've been _so_ worried. But he must have found her out--_simply_ found her out."

Lois weighed the wisdom of asking questions or of learning more than Thor chose to tell her, but in the end it seemed reasonable to ask, "Found her out--how?"

Ena threw up her pretty hands. "Oh, well, with a girl of that sort what could you expect? Claude's been completely taken in--or he was. He's so innocent, poor boy. He wouldn't believe--not even when I told him. I tried to stand by him--I really did. Didn't I, Archie? When he said he wanted to marry her I said, said I, 'If she's a good girl, Claude, and loves you, I'll accept her.' I really did, Lois--and you can imagine what it cost me. But I could see at once. Any one who wasn't infatuated as Claude was would have seen at a glance. The girl must be--well, something awful."

Lois spoke warmly. "Oh, I don't think that."

"My dear Lois, I _know_. What's more, Thor knows, too. And I must say I can't help blaming Thor. He's backed Claude up--and backed him up when all the while he's known what she was."

Lois felt obliged to speak. "I don't think he's known anything--anything to her discredit."

"Oh, but he has. I a.s.sure you he has. And what amazes me about Thor--simply amazes me--is that he shouldn't see it in the right light.

Archie did, as soon as I told him. Didn't you, Archie? And I _didn't_ tell him," Ena ran on, excitedly, "till I saw what trouble dear Claudie was in. When Claudie began to see for himself I betrayed his confidence to the extent of telling his father, but not before. You could hardly blame me for that, could you?--his own father. And when I did tell Archie--why, it was so plain that a child could have understood."

The question, "What was plain?" could not but come to Lois's lips, but she succeeded in withholding it. She even rose, with signs of going. It was Archie who responded to his wife, taking a man's view of that which seemed to her so d.a.m.ning.

"We must make allowances, of course, for its being a c.o.c.k-and-bull story to begin with. Girls like that never know how to tell the truth."

"We couldn't treat it as a c.o.c.k-and-bull story so long as Claude believed it," the mother declared, in defense of her right to be anxious. "And Thor believed it, too. I know he did. And I _do_ blame Thor for not telling Claude--a boy so inexperienced!--that a girl couldn't be getting money from some other man--and go on getting it after she was married--unless there'd been something wrong."

Lois felt as if her blood had been arrested at her heart. "Money from some other man?"

"Money from some other man," Mrs. Masterman repeated, firmly. "I told Claude at the time that no man in his senses would settle money on a girl like that unless there'd been a reason--and a very good reason, too. A very good reason, _too_, I said. But Claude's as ignorant of the world as if he was ten years old. He really is. She took him in completely."

Being too consciously a gentleman to say more in disparagement of a woman's character than he had permitted himself already, Masterman remained in the library while his wife accompanied Lois to the door. The latter had said good-by and was descending the steps when Ena cried out in a tone that was like a confession:

"Oh, Lois, you don't think that poor girl had any _reason_ to throw herself into the pond, do you?"

At the foot of the steps Lois turned and looked upward. Ena was wringing her hands, but the daughter-in-law didn't notice it. As a matter of fact, Lois was too deeply sunk into thoughts of her own to have any attention to spare for other people's searchings of heart. Having heard the question, she could answer it, but absently, and as though it were a point of no pressing concern.