Todd held her close. "My little girl," he began, "wherever lonely, sour-hearted women--or men--congregate, there will the cancer-growth of scandal spread. They are the disseminators of half our domestic tragedies. It is a disease like other foul things,--cancer itself, leprosy, diphtheria,--though not so fatal, for the thing they tackle is a man's soul and character, immortal essences, never to be truly tarnished but from within. As I figure it out, scandal is a good deal like fungus. It may be planted anywhere, but it sticks and thrives only where it finds a rotten spot." "Oh, you help me, dad,--you do help me. Of course these rumors cannot hurt the white heart of my darling,--but she must not hear them. One question more, daddy--" Todd stopped her. "It is mail-morning, and that means a busy one. You've had a sermon long enough for one day. Come to think of it, why does Dodge get out of the way when you appear? What have you been doing to my secretary?" Gwendolen gave a small gasp and vanished. Todd looked after her. "I thought that would send her flying." He turned to his desk. His face was very tender. "Poor little one," he murmured, "she's up against her first experiences all in a bunch. God help her! Things hurt worse when we are young. But all will come right, with His help. I know my child was made for happiness. She has the hall-mark of it under her skin. But Yuki--poor little Yuki--!" He shook his head, seated himself, and soon became lost in the voluminous foreign mail. * * * * * Yuki, pale, white, and docile, moved like a determined ghost through vistas of gray hours. In that quiet household came no hint of scandal, and for Yuki's part, had she heard, she would not have greatly cared. The first brief chapter of her life was gone, shut down, like a book, and in its pages was the living flower of her love. She did not suffer now. She felt a dull gladness that she was inevitably committed to her duty. Temptation and further striving had vanished from her days. Except for the sorrow of that dear one there would be no regret. What anguish came personally, through remorse for her broken faith, she would be glad to bear. She had, through faithlessness, won the level of a higher faith. Let her wounds gape and her heart's blood fall like rain! She wished to feel more sorrow than she felt, but nothing came very clearly in these days of preparation. More than once she thought, with a tiny pang of apprehension, "If I have lost the power to feel pain, then are sacrifice and duty alike robbed of their essential oil." Now, in place of averted faces and blank eyes, those of the Onda household fawned about her. Onda made grim overtures. The giggling of Maru San ceased only with her slumber--that, too, was audible--while old Suzumé, darting about the rooms like a gray ferret, babbled out the many titles that her nursling soon would wear, and made coarse jests and prophecies about the future.