"Of course I believe you!" she dreamily said. "I know you would help me if you could! But how can you? It is a foolish and stupid, rather than a wrong, action of mine, in the past! You yourself say that God Himself does not meddle with the past! No! He does not! We have to suffer the consequences." "But--one may deal with the consequences, darling," he tenderly said. "Tell me--all--exactly as it is! Won’t you? I knew there was something rankling in your mind. I can assure you we shall both be the happier for trusting each other. Come, out with it!" "How can I put it to you without betraying--_her_?" she mournfully began, her strained eyes fixed on a beautiful clump of lilies, which seemed to mock her with their modest stateliness, their spotless purity--she, in her own idea, irrevocably defiled by her tie to Victor Mercier--her body smirched by his embrace, her poor cold lips fouled by his detested kiss. "It was--a dear, intimate friend, at school. I loved her so, that I believed in her feelings. I helped her in a secret love affair--with--a young man." "Well, that was quite natural--there was no great harm in that, I am sure!" he exclaimed, heartily, beginning to be half ashamed of his secret doubts, and telling himself he ought to have remembered with what difficulty a girl brought up in a boarding-school learns life and its meaning, how a school-girl is handicapped when she starts real existence in the world. "There was harm in it, although I did not think so at the time!" she went on, bitterly. "For she married him secretly--and no sooner had she done so, than he was taken up by the police for something or another--and ran away. She never heard anything of him until the other day, when he turned up. Oh, poor, unhappy girl! What is to be done for her? Cannot you understand that I, who helped to her undoing, am miserable?" "My dearest child, we cannot go about the world bearing the consequences of other people’s folly. It is not common sense, we have plenty of troubles of our own!" he said, almost chidingly. He felt just a little hurt that his love had not been strong enough to balance her vicarious suffering. The terrible truth that she was speaking of herself never once occurred to him. "Your friend married this man, not you! She must suffer for it. She had better make the best of her bad bargain--and really must not worry you! It is positively inhuman to do so!" He spoke with slight indignation. She shuddered. "But surely--there must be some way to rid her of him?" she asked, striving with all her might to still her inward anguish, and speak collectedly. "Oh yes, if she does not shrink from a public scandal," he said, somewhat dryly. "The young lady can apply for a divorce. How long since his desertion? Four years?" He shrugged his shoulders. "She had better employ detectives to find out his doings during those years. But she ought to consult lawyers!--What? She would not do that? Why not?"