She knew all the great romances of the world, and knew likewise more than the greatest romancer ever wrote of women. For her--even with her wistful smile, the sudden flashing of her wistful eyes--there could be no romance, and she knew that well. Not for her was to be ever the love of man. She was of those cruelly defective in body, who may not hope for any love worth having. Surrounded daily by her friends, her books, Miss Julia was an eager reader, and an eager lover. She knew more of life's philosophy perhaps than any soul in all her town, and yet she might enjoy less of life's rewards than any other. A woman to the heart, feminine in every item, flaming with generous instincts, and yet denied all hope of motherhood; a woman steeped in philosophy and yet trained in emotion--what must she do--what could she do--she, one of the denied? What Miss Julia had done long years ago was to select as her best friend the girl who of all in that heartless little town most needed a friend--Aurora Lane. She knew Aurora's secret--in part. In full she never yet had asked to know, so large was she herself of heart. All Spring Valley had scorned Aurora Lane, for that she had no father for her child. And--with what logic or lack of logic, who shall say?--Julia Delafield had taken Aurora Lane close to her own heart--_because_ she had the child! It is not too much to say that these two hopeless women, the one outcast of society, the other outcast of God, had brought up that child between them. Those who say women have no secrets they can keep should have noted this strange partnership in business, in life, in maternity! This had gone on for twenty years, and not a soul in Spring Valley could have told the truth of it. Don Lane did not know of it even now. "Why, Aurora," said Miss Julia more than once in those early years to her friend, "you must not grieve. See what God has given you--a son!--and such a son! How glad, how proud, how contented you ought to be. You have a son! Look at me!" So Aurora Lane did look at Julia Delafield. They comforted one another. It was from Miss Julia that year by year, falteringly, she learned to hope, learned to hold up her head. Thus gradually, by the aid of the love of another woman--a rare and beautiful thing, a wondrous thing--a thing so very rare in that world of jealousy in which by fate women so largely live--she got back some hold on life--she, mother of the son of no man, at the urge of a woman who could never have a son! "Oh, we will plan, Aurora!" said Miss Julia in those piteous earlier times. "We will plan--we will get on. We'll fight it out together." And so they had, shoulder to shoulder, unnoted, unpraised and unadvised, year by year; and because they knew she had at least one friend, those who sat in judgment on Aurora Lane came little by little to forgive or to forget her sin, as it once was called of all the pulpits there.