"Richie," said Julia, with a pleasant childish note of triumphant reproach in her voice, "was worried to _death_ because I was here alone with Anna! Don't you think he's crazy, Aunt Sanna?"

"Why, you two have been here alone?" Miss Toland asked, stirring her chocolate.

"No, we haven't!" Julia answered cheerfully. "I never thought of it before; but this dear old maid either has you here, or Janey, or Doctor Brice's Mary from the village--isn't he queer?"

"It isn't as if you weren't practically brother and sister, Richie,"

Miss Toland said moderately. "Not too much b.u.t.ter, dear!" she interpolated, in reference to the toast her nephew was making, adding a moment later, "Still, I don't know--a pretty woman in your position can't be too careful, Julia!"

"Oh, Lord, you're an appreciative pair!" Richard said disgustedly, going out to the kitchen for more bread.

Presently Miss Toland complained of fatigue, and left them to the fire.

And sitting there, almost silent, Julia thought that she had never found her host so charming before. His rambling discourse amused her, touched her; she loved his occasional shy introduction of a line of poetry, his eager s.n.a.t.c.hing of a book now and then to illuminate some point with half a page of prose.

"Pleasant, isn't this, Rich?" she asked lazily, in a quiet interval.

"Oh, _pleasant_!" He cleared his throat. "Yes--it's very pleasant!"

"And why couldn't you and I have done this just as well without Aunt Sanna?" Julia asked triumphantly.

Richard gave her a look full of all-dignified endurance, a look that wondered a little that she could like to give him pain.

"No reason at all," said he. And a sudden suspicion flamed in Julia's heart with all the surety of an inspiration.

The revelation came in absolute completeness; she had never even suspected Richie's little tragedy before. For a few moments Julia sat stunned, then she said seriously:

"I always feel myself so much Jim's wife, Rich; I suppose it's a sort of protection to me. It never occurs to me that any one could think me less bound than I think myself."

"Sure you do!" Richard said, struggling with the back log. "But other people might not! And it would be rotten to have him come back and hear anything."

"I suppose he'll come back," Julia said, dreamily, almost in a whisper.

"I don't think of it much, now! I used to think of it a good deal at first; I used to cry all night long sometimes, and write him long letters that I never sent. It seemed as if the longing for him was burning me up, like a fire!"

"d.a.m.n him!" Richard muttered.

"Oh, no, Richie, don't say that!" Julia protested. Richard, still on one knee, with the poker in his hand, turned to her almost roughly.

"For G.o.d's sake, Julie, don't defend him! I'll hold my tongue about him, I suppose, as I always have done, but don't pretend he has any excuse for treating you this way! You--the best and sweetest and bravest woman that ever lived, bringing happiness and decency wherever you go--"

"Richie, Richie, stop!" Julia protested, between laughter and tears.

"Don't talk so! I _will_ defend Jim," she added gravely, "and he _did_ have an excuse. It seems unfair to me that he should have all the blame." She held her hand out, fingers spread to the reviving flame, rosy and transparent in the glow.

"Rich, no one knows this but Jim and me; not Aunt Sanna, not my own mother," she presently resumed. "But it makes what he did a little clearer, and I'm going to tell you."

"Don't tell me anything," said Richard gruffly, eyes on the fire.

"Yes, I want to," Julia answered. But she was silent for a while, a look of infinite sadness on her musing face. "I made a serious mistake when I was a girl, Rich," she went on, after an interval. "I had no reason for it--not great love, or great need. I had no excuse. Or, yes, I did have this excuse: I had been spoiled; I had been told that I was unusual, independent, responsible to n.o.body. I knew that this thing existed all about me, and if I thought of it at all, I suppose I thought that there could be nothing so very dreadful about what men did as a matter of course! Perhaps that's the best explanation; my mind was like a young boy's. I didn't particularly seek out this thing, or want this thing; but I was curious, and it came my way--

"Don't misunderstand me, Richie. I wasn't 'betrayed.' I'd had, I suppose, as little good instruction, as little example, and watching and guarding as any girl in the world. But I knew better! Just as every boy knows better, and is taken, sooner or later, unawares. Of course, if I'd been a boy--all this would be only a memory now, hardly shameful or regrettable even, dim and far away! Especially as it lasted only a few weeks, before I was sixteen!

"And, of course, people would say that I haven't paid the full penalty, being a girl instead of a boy! Look at poor Tess, and Trilby, and Hetty in 'Adam Bede!' I never let any one know it; even your aunt never would have overlooked _that_, whatever she might say now. No; even Jim protected me--and yet," Julia put her head back, shut her eyes, "and yet I've paid a thousand times!" said she.

There was a long silence, and then Richard said:

"I've thought sometimes this might be it, Ju. Being alone so much, and reading and thinking--I've worked it out in my own mind. Aunt Sanna saw Jim in Berlin two years ago, you know, and gave him a horrible raking over the coals, and just from what she quoted, it seemed as if there was some secret about it, and that it lay with you. Then, of course," Richie eased his lame leg by stretching it at full length before him, sinking down in his chair, finger tips meeting, "of course I knew Jim," he resumed. "Jim's pride is his weak point. He's like a boy in that: he wants everything or nothing. He's like all my mother's children," said Richie, comfortably a.n.a.lytical, "undisciplined. Chill penury never repressed our n.o.ble rages; we never knew the sweet uses of adversity. I did, of course, but here I am, a childless getting on in years, not apt to leave a deep impression on the coming generation. It's a funny world, Julie! It's a strange sort of civilization to pose under the name of Christ. Christ had no double standard of morals; Christ forgave. Law is all very well, society has its uses, I have no doubt, but there are higher standards than either!" "Well, that has come to me forcibly during the past few years," Julia said thoughtfully. "I wasn't a praying small girl; how could I be? But after I went to The Alexander, being physically clean and respectable made me long to be clean all over, I suppose, and I began to go to church, and after a while I went to confession, Rich, and I felt made over, as if all the stain of it had slipped away! And then Jim came, and I told him all about it--"

"Before you were married?"

"Oh, Richie, of course!"

"Well, then, what--if he knew--"

"Oh, Richie, that's the terrible part. For I thought it was all dead and gone, and it _was_ all dead and gone as far as I was concerned! But we couldn't forget it--it suddenly seemed a live issue all over again; it just rose and stood between us, and I felt so helpless, and poor Jim, I think he was helpless, too!"

Richard made no comment, and there was a silence.

"You know Jim wasn't a--wasn't exactly a saint, Ju," Richard said awkwardly after a while.

"I know," she answered with a quick nod.

"I believe he was an exceptionally decent fellow, as fellows go,"

pursued Richie. "But, of course, it is the accepted thing. On Jim's first vacation, after he entered college, he told me he didn't care much for that sort of thing--we had a long talk about it. But a year or two later there was a young woman--he used to call her 'the little girl'--I don't know exactly--Anyway, Dad went East, there was some sort of a fuss, and I know Jim treated her awfully well--there never was any question of that--she never felt anything but grat.i.tude to him, whatever grievances she had about any one else--"

His voice dropped.

"But it's not the same thing," Julia said with a sigh.

"No, I suppose not," Richard agreed.

"Life has been too violent and too swift with me," Julia resumed, after a while. "If I had the past fifteen years to live over again, I would live them very differently. I made an idol of Jim; he could do no wrong.

He wanted more bracing treatment than that; he should have been boldly faced down. If I had been wiser, I would have treated all my marriage differently. If I had been very wise, I should not have married at all, should have kept my own secret. Perhaps, marrying, I should not have told him the truth; I don't know. Anyway, I have mixed things up hopelessly, given other people and myself an enormous amount of pain, and wrecked my life and Jim's. And now, when I am thirty, I feel as if I could begin to see light, begin to live--as if now, when nothing on earth seems really important, I knew how to meet life!"

"Well, that's been my att.i.tude for some years," Richie said, shifting his lame leg again. "Of course I started in handicapped, which is a great advantage--"

"Advantage? Oh, Richie!" Julia protested.

"Yes, it is, from one point of view," he insisted whimsically. "'Who loses his life,' you know. Most boys and girls start off into life like kites in a high wind without tails. There's a glorious dipping and plunging and sailing for a little while, and then down they come in a tangle of string and paper and broken wood. I had a tail to start with, some humiliating deficiency to keep me balanced. No football and tennis for me, no flirting and dancing and private theatricals. When Bab and Ned were in one whirl of good times, I was working out chess problems to make myself forget my hip, and reading Carlyle and Th.o.r.eau and Emerson.

n.o.body is born content, Ju, and n.o.body has it thrust upon him; just a few achieve it. I worked over the secret of happiness as if it was the multiplication table. Happiness is the best thing in the world. It's only a habit, and I've got it."

"_Is_ happiness the best thing in the world, Rich?" Julia asked wistfully.

"I think it is; real happiness, which doesn't necessarily mean a box at the Metropolitan and a touring car," Richie said, smiling. "It seems to me, to have a little house up here on the mountain, and to have people here like me, and let me take care of them--"

"For nothing?" interposed Julia.

"Don't you believe it! I didn't write a cheque last month! Anyway, it suits me. I have books, and letters, and a fire, and now and then a friend or two--and now and then Julia and Anna to amuse me!"

"I'm happy, too," Julia said thoughtfully. "I realized it some time ago--oh, a year ago! I feel just as you might feel, Rich, if you had left some critical operation unfinished, or done in a wrong way, and then gone back to do it over. I feel as if, in going back to first principles, and doing what I could for my own people, I had 'trued' a part of my life, if you can understand that! I had gone climbing and blundering on, and reached a point where I couldn't help myself, but they were just where they started, and I _could_ help them!"

"It was probably the best thing you could have done for yourself, at the same time," Richard interpolated, with a swift glance.