"Yes, he was my husband," assented Maria quietly. "You were so brave and so patient, and you stuck by him to the last, as a wife ought to do. Then thar's not even a child left to you now." Maria turned slowly toward her and then looked away again into the fire. The charred end of a lightwood knot had fallen on the stones, and, picking it up, she threw it back into the flames. "For a year before his death his mind was quite gone," she said in a voice that quivered slightly; "he had to be taken to an asylum, but I went with him and nursed him till he died. There were times when he would allow no one else to enter his room or even bring him his meals. I have sat by him for two days and nights without sleeping, and though he did not recognise me, he would not let me stir from my place." "And yet he treated you very badly--even his family said so." "That is all over now, and we were both to blame. I owed him reparation, and I made it, thank God, at the last." As she raised her bare arms to the cushioned back of her chair Miss Saidie caught a glimpse of a deep white scar which ran in a jagged line above her elbow. "Oh, it is nothing, nothing," said Maria hastily, clasping her hands again upon her knees. "That part of my life is over and done with and may rest in peace. I forgave him then, and he forgives me now. One always forgives when one understands, you know, and we both understand to-day--he no less than I. The chief thing was that we made a huge, irretrievable mistake--the mistake that two people make when they think that love can be coddled and nursed like a domestic pet--when they forget that it goes wild and free and comes at no man's call. Folly like that is its own punishment, I suppose." "My dear, my dear," gasped Miss Saidie, in awe-stricken sympathy before the wild remorse in Maria's voice.