“I made them up,” said Henrietta contritely. “You got some,” said Susan. “I took them from the postman myself. What right had he to be writing to you if you was married?” “What right?” asked Henrietta. She did not mean to lie to Miss Susan any more than was necessary, but the further lie came out unbidden. “What right? Every right because--you see--William Vane is my father!” Miss Susan looked nto Henrietta's frank eyes and was satisfied. “Well,” she said grudgingly, “I'm glad you told me the truth finally. Lyin' never gets anybody anywhere.” In her heart of hearts Henrietta hoped Miss Susan was right, but she was beginning to doubt it. Lying seemed to be getting her into a most difficult web of contradictions. CHAPTER X When Henrietta Bates told Miss Susan that Freeman Todder was her husband, she told the truth, with the sole exception that her name was not Henrietta Bates nor his Freeman Todder, but all her other stories regarding Freeman and the mythical Billy Vane were lies. Henrietta was not a wicked woman; she was the kindest-hearted woman that ever lived; always ready and eager to do a kindness and full of pity for those who, like Lem, seemed to be in trouble. The trouble with Henrietta, to use that name as the most convenient, was that she was romantic. She was one of those women--and there are men like her--who live a few inches above the tops of their own heads so that their words have to jump above solid facts in order to give satisfaction to their imaginations. In Riverbank there is a phrase, used when small boys like Lem take a huge helping of food and fail to consume it, to the effect that their eyes are bigger than their stomachs. Henrietta's desire for romance was bigger than her facts. She was a romantic liar, filling in the gap between what was true and what she wished was true with details that were not true. In other words, Henrietta was a born romancer. There are many such, and it is remarkable how many escape discovery and humiliation. It is always a little regrettable when one of the pleasanter of the kind _is_ discovered and humiliated. There are women--and men--who live their entire lives in a golden haze of untruths, who do no one any great harm and who get immense momentary pleasure (and whole ecstasies of pleasant pain of conscience) out of their romantic prevarications. Most often it is no one's particular business to grasp one of these lies and by unpleasant cross-questioning and investigating prove the romancer a liar. The one who does such crossquestioning is usually a most disagreeable person--the sort of nosey, rudely inquisitive person none of us likes. I have given a great deal of thought to lies, having been a well-known liar myself before I reformed, and being an admirer of the late Mark Twain, who was a connoisseur in this field, I have classified human beings in four rough groups: 1. Those, like Miss Susan Redding, who sin not and tell no lies.