She was now at the last row of benches, not five feet distant from him, where she stood a second, while she looked up into his face and smiled, lifting her hand in a little expressive gesture. Then she turned aside to the place where Ollie Chase sat, shame-stricken and stunned, beside her mother. The women who had been sitting near Ollie had withdrawn from her, as if she had become unclean with her confession. And now, as Alice approached, Ollie's mother gave her a hard, resentful look, and put her arm about her daughter as if to protect her from any physical indignities which Alice might be bent on offering. Ollie shrank against her mother, her hair bright above her somber garb, as if it was the one spot in her where any of the sunshine of her past remained. Alice went to her with determined directness. She bent over her, and took her by the hand. "Thank you! You're the bravest woman in the world!" she said. Ollie looked up, wonder and disbelief struggling against the pathetic hopelessness in her eyes. Alice bent lower. She kissed the young widow's pale forehead. Joe was ashamed that he had forgotten Ollie. He saw tears come into Ollie's eyes as she clung closer to Alice's hand, and he heard the shocked gasping of women, and the grunts of men, and the stirring murmur of surprise which shook the crowd. He opened the little gate in the railing and went out. "You didn't have to do that for me, Ollie," said he, kindly; "I could have got on, somehow, without that." "Both of you--" said Ollie, a sob shaking her breath; "it was for both of you!" There was a churchlike stillness around them. Colonel Price had advanced, and now stood near the little group, a look of understanding in his kind old face. Ollie mastered her sudden gust of weeping, and shook her disordered hair back from her forehead, a defiant light in her eyes. "I don't care now, I don't care what _anybody_ says!" said she. Her mother glanced around with the fire of battle in her eyes. In that look she defied the public, and uttered her contempt for its valuation and opinion. Alice Price had lifted her crushed and broken daughter up. She had taken her by the hand, and she had kissed her, to show the world that she did not hold her as one defiled. Judge Maxwell and all of them had seen her do it. She had given Ollie absolution before all men. Ollie drew her cloak around her shoulders and rose to her feet. "Remember that; for both of you, for one as much as the other," said she, looking into Alice's eyes. "Come on, Mother; we'll go home now."