They went to Jeanette Barclay's room,--the gray-haired woman and the girl,--and they sat there talking for a time--talking of things that were on their lips and not in their hearts. Each felt that the other understood her. And each felt that something was to be said. For one day before the end Jeanette's mother had said to her: "Jennie, if I am not here always go to Molly--ask her to tell you about her girlhood." The mother had rested for a while, and then added, "Tell her I said for you to ask her, and she'll know what I mean." "Jeanette," said Molly Brownwell, "your mother and I were girls together. Your father saw more of her at our house than he did at her own home, until they married. Did you know that?" Jeanette nodded assent. "So one day last June she said to me, 'Molly, sometime I wish you would tell Jennie all about you and Bob.'" Mrs. Brownwell paused, and Jeanette said, "Yes, mother told me to ask you to, Aunt Molly." Tears came into the daughter's eyes, and she added, "I think she knew even then that--" And then it all came back, and after a while the elder woman was saying, "Well, once upon a time there lived a princess, my dear. All good stories begin so--don't they? She was a fat, pudgy little princess who longed to grow up and have hoop-skirts like a real sure-enough woman princess, and there came along a tall prince--the tallest, handsomest prince in all the wide world, I think. And he and the princess fell in love, as princesses and princes will, you know, my dear,--just as they do now, I am told. And the prince had to go away on business and be gone a long, long time, and while he was gone the father of the princess and the friend of the prince got into trouble--and the princess thought it was serious trouble. She thought the father of the prince would have to go to jail and maybe the prince and his friend fail. My, my, Jeanette, what a big word that word fail seemed to the little fat princess! So she let a man make love to her who could lend them all some money and keep the father out of jail and the prince and his friend from the awful fate of failure. So the man lent the money and made love, and made love. And the little princess had to listen; every one seemed to like to have her listen, so she listened and she listened, and she was a weak little princess. She knew she had wronged the prince by letting the man make love to her, and her soul was smudged and--oh, Jeanette, she was such a foolish, weak, miserable little princess, and they didn't tell her that there is only one prince for every princess, and one princess for every prince--so she took the man, and sent away the prince, and the man made love ever so beautifully--but it was not the real thing, my dear,--not the real thing. And afterwards when she saw the prince--so young and so strong and so handsome, her heart burned for him as with a flame, and she was not ashamed; the wicked, wicked princess, she didn't know. And so they walked together one night right