"Not till--they--let me--or I'm older, John. They've always trusted me and left me free. And I can't deceive them." He liked this--it was another proof that she was, through and through, the sort of woman who was worthy to be his wife. "Well--we'll wait," he said. "And if they won't be fair to us, why, we'll have a right to do the best we can." He gave her a tragic look. "I've set my heart on you, Polly, and I never can stand it not to get what I've set my heart on. If I lost you, I'd go straight to ruin." She might have been a great deal older and wiser and still not have seen in this a confirmation of her father's judgment of her lover. And her parents had unconsciously driven her into a mental state in which, if he had committed a crime, it would have seemed to her their fault rather than his. The next day she opened the subject with her mother--the subject that was never out of their minds. "I can't forget him, mother. I CAN'T give him up." With the splendid confidence of youth, "I can save him--he'll do anything for my sake." With the touching ignorance of youth, "He's done nothing so very dreadful, I'm sure--I'd believe him against the whole world." And in the evening her mother approached her father. She was in sympathy with Pauline, though her loyalty to her husband made her careful not to show it. She had small confidence in a man's judgments of men on their woman-side, great confidence in the power of women to change and uplift men. "Father," said she, when they were alone on the side porch after supper, "have you noticed how hard Polly is taking IT?" His eyes and the sudden deepening of the lines in his face answered her. "Don't you think maybe we've been a little--too--severe?" "I've tried to think so, but--" He shook his head. "Maggie, he's hopeless, hopeless." "I don't know much about those things." This was a mere form of speech. She thought she knew all there was to be known; and as she was an intelligent woman who had lived a long time and had a normal human curiosity she did know a great deal. But, after the fashion of many of the women of the older generation, she had left undisturbed his delusion that her goodness was the result not of intelligence but of ignorance. "But I can't help fearing it isn't right to condemn a young man forever because he was led away as a boy." "I can't discuss it with you, Maggie--it's a degradation even to speak of him before a good woman. You must rely upon my judgment. Polly must put him out of her head." "But what am I to tell her? You can't make a woman like our Pauline put a man out of her life when she loves him unless you give her a reason that satisfies her. And if you don't give ME a reason that satisfies me how can I give HER a reason that will satisfy her?" "I'll talk to her," said the colonel, after a long pause. "She must--she shall give him up, mother."