“Yes. Six years--eight years. I don’t know....” She heard herself pushing the date back farther and farther, but she could not help it. “At a time when you were desperately lonely and unhappy?” “Oh--not much more than usual.” She added, after a moment: “I don’t claim any extenuating circumstances.” “The cad--the blackguard! I--” She interrupted him. “Not that either--quite. When he first met Anne he didn’t know; didn’t know she was even related to me. When he found out he went away; he went away twice. She made him come back. She reproached me for separating them. Nothing could have stopped her except my telling her. And I couldn’t tell her when I saw how she cared.” “No--” There was a slight break in the harshness of his voice. Again she was silent, not through the wish to avoid speaking, but from sheer inability to find anything more to say. Suddenly he lifted his miserable eyes, and looked at her for a second. “You’ve been through hell,” he said. “Yes. I’m there still.” She stopped, and then, drawn by the pity in his tone, once more felt herself slipping down the inevitable slope of confession. “It’s not only _that_ hell--there’s another. I want to tell you everything now. It was not only for fear of Anne’s suffering that I couldn’t speak; it was because I couldn’t bear the thought of what she would think of me if I did. It was so sweet being her mother--I couldn’t bear to give it up. And the triumph of your all thinking she’d done right to bring me back--I couldn’t give that up either, because I knew how much it counted in her feeling for me. Somehow, it turned me once more into the person I was meant to be--or thought I was meant to be. That’s all. I’m glad I’ve told you.... Only you mustn’t let it hurt you; not for long....” After she had ended he continued to sit without moving; she had the impression that he had not heard what she had said. His attention, his receptive capacity, were still engrossed by the stark fact of her confession: her image and Chris Fenno’s were slowly burning themselves into his shrinking vision. To assist at the process was like peeping into a torture-chamber, and for the moment she lost the sense of her own misery in the helpless contemplation of his. Sterile pain, if ever there was-- At last she crossed over to where he sat, and laid a touch on his shoulder. “Fred--you mustn’t let this hurt you. It has done me good to tell you ... it has helped. Your being so sorry has helped. And now it’s all over ... it’s ended....”