“It was my fault. I thought I was so bored. I thought I was tired of Harry--of Harry who has always been a thousand times too good for me. And so I--I flirted with him. Helen Didier says I threw myself at his head. She’s a hateful woman, and I loathe her, but that’s true, I did. He never cared for me. In my heart I knew he didn’t, even when I led him on to make love to me. It was nothing but my wretched wicked vanity. Just because I was bored. Just because----” Her voice sank, and for a moment Anne heard nothing but the painful catching of her breath in exhausted sobs. “And the awful part was,” she stammered at last, “that _I_ didn’t care either. I never meant it to be more than a flirtation. At least I think I didn’t,” she added with a pitiful attempt at perfect honesty. “But----” She stopped short. “But it became more than that. He was your lover?” She nodded her head, and then suddenly clasped Anne with convulsive strength. “And Harry’s coming to-morrow. And I’m a vile woman!” She cried the words aloud in a panic of horror. “Oh, Miss Page, what shall I do. What will become of me? what shall I say to Harry? I shall go mad!” Anne laid her cheek on the head that rested against her shoulder, and was silent. She understood what was passing in the soul of the weak, terror-struck little woman. The horror of outraged conventions, the nightmare conviction that she, the descendant of generations of respectable, honest women, she who had never heard of the sin she had committed, except in accents of disdain or horror, had become an abandoned creature, unfit for decent society, branded, defiled, eternally lost. Anne’s heart went out to her in passionate pity. “Oh help me! Tell me what to do,” Madge wailed. “You’re the only woman in the world I dared to tell, because----” The abrupt pause, and a nervous gesture betrayed her, and Anne started a little, overcome by a sudden conviction. “Yes. Why did you tell me, my dear?” she asked quietly. “Because,” began Madge hurriedly, “you are so kind, so sweet, I felt----” “That wasn’t the only reason.” “No!” she cried with sudden recklessness. “It wasn’t. It’s because I heard that you--that you--Helen Didier found it out. She never rested. And then I asked--_him_, and he said I was never to mention your name to her. But she found out all about it, on the pretence that it was _you_ who had corrupted my mind, and made me what she calls fast. And so----” “And so you thought you might confess to a fellow sinner?” Anne’s cheek still rested on Madge’s hair, and over her head, her eyes smiled very quietly into the fire. Madge was silent. “I knew you wouldn’t utterly despise me,” she murmured at last, in a low voice. “He has gone?” asked Anne after a moment. “You sent him away?” “He came on Monday--two or three days ago. I’ve forgotten when.” She made a distracted gesture. “Until--until just lately, it was all right. We were not--not----”