"I wouldn't--" she took up her handkerchief and examined the initial on it with critical intentness--"I wouldn't call it anything. We are very good friends." "Are we?" "I've always thought so. If I'm mistaken--" She bit her lip nervously. "At least we used to be. But friendship is so insecure. That of years is killed in a moment and--" "A thousand evidences forgotten if there be one imaginary failure, one seeming neglect. But I'm not speaking of friendship." A step behind made him turn, and as Hedwig came in he got up and took the telegram she handed him with only half-concealed irritation. Mary Cary, too, stood up, and as Hedwig left the room the bit of yellow paper was handed her. "So Mr. Bartlett is coming himself," she said, reading and handing the paper back. "That is much the best. I thought he was too busy. Does Miss Gibbie know?" "Not yet." The telegram was put in his pocket. "Whether she wants to or not, Miss Gibbie will have to let Yorkburg know who its friend is. I don't doubt she meant well. To do things as nobody else does them is to her irresistible. But how a woman of her sense and understanding of human nature could fail to see the complications of a situation in which secrecy and mystery were elemental parts is beyond my comprehension." "But that's because you're a man." She nodded toward him with something of the old bantering air. She and I were just women, and women don't see clearly--like men. After mistakes are out on the table, even a woman can see them, but it takes a man to see them before they are made. Of course, it was a queer way of doing things, but it was her way. Everybody is queer." "I don't deny it." "And if she didn't want her left hand to know what the right was doing, why tell it? Everybody has a pet something they take literally in the Bible. Miss Gibbie likes the sixth chapter of Matthew. A great many people seem never to have read it." "And a great many people who try to practically apply the teachings of their Master are called cranks and crazy. Until human nature is born again, human tongues will talk and human noses sniff and human ears listen for what is ugly and unkind. The partnership into which you and Miss Gibbie entered was all right in purpose and intent, but you forgot in your calculations the perversities of the people you were trying to help. People will pardon anything sooner than a secret." "I suppose I will have to tell how Tree Hill was given me, and about the bonds and the fifty thousand dollars and the baths and the tired and sick people sent away. How do you suppose it can be told--in the way she will mind least, I mean?" John, leaning against his end of the mantel, looked at the girl at hers, and laughed in her troubled eyes.