"Listen, my dear girl. There are rights--your rights I have every reason to believe, and legal, as it seems to me. This whole matter involves a point of honor with me. Let me explain--don't shrink so from hearing me; I won't mention any names. Let me ask you a question:--Did Delia Beaseley tell you there was a marriage certificate among those papers?" "Yes, but, thank God, she could not remember the name! It has been so many years--and all before I was born." "But I know it. It stands in black and white, and through that unlying witness you have rights--that money, you know--" "The 'conscience money'?" "Yes." "It is tainted, tainted, and my mother's blood is on it--I will not touch it. I will not have it. I have taken wages in Lamoral because Jamie assured me the money was your own--not one penny of it from that fund." "Yes, it is my own, and I never made a better investment with so few dollars. But, Marcia--" He hesitated; his face looked tense; his voice sounded as if strained to breaking. The knife was hurting him almost as much as it hurt me. I looked at him. "Don't look at me so; I can't do my duty if you do." "I don't want you to do your duty so far as I am concerned. I want you to show your friendship for me, by not telling me anything that you may know." "But, Marcia, it is time--" "But not now--oh, not now! You don't know what I have borne--I can bear no more--" I spoke brokenly. "My dear girl, what can you tell me that I do not know, I who was with your mother in her last hour--" I broke down then, sobbing, trying to explain but only half coherently: "She was here--twenty-seven years ago--with André--he showed me the tree--" "Marcia, calm yourself. Tell me, if you can, just what you mean." I struggled to regain my self-control, and when I could speak without sobbing, I explained in a few words my reason for thinking my mother was here long years before me with the man who was my father. The Doctor listened intently. "This makes the past clearer to me, Marcia, but at the same time it complicates the present, the future--" "Oh, don't let's talk about past or future!" I cried, nervously irritated by this constant reappearance of new combinations of my past in my present, and possible future. "Let me enjoy what is given me to enjoy now--it is so much!" "I must see my way, Marcia. A duty remains a duty, even if the doing of it be postponed. I am your friend. I cannot let you wreck your life---" "Wreck my life? What do you mean?" I demanded sharply. "How can I wreck it when for the first time I am in a safe harbor?" He could not, or would not, answer me directly.