"Yes, yes, very plausible--to _say_, of course. I see she's talked you over. She did me. I was ready to pull the moon down for her footstool that first night she came to me. I'm ready to do it now--when I'm with her. But away from her, with a chance to think,--it really is absurd, you know, when you come right down to it. Here are Burke and his father, my good friends, hunting the country over for Burke's wife and child. And here am I, harboring her and abetting her, and never opening my head. Really, it's the sort of thing that you'd say--er--couldn't happen, you know." "But it _is_ happening; and so far as their finding her is concerned, you said yourself, long ago, that it was the safest hiding-place in the world, for they'd never think of looking in it. They've never been in the habit of coming here, and their friends don't know us. As for the servants, and the few of my friends who see her, she's merely Mrs. Darling. That's all. Besides, you're entirely leaving out of consideration Helen's own attitude in the matter. I haven't a doubt but that, if you did tell, she'd at least _attempt_ to carry out her crazy threats of flight and oblivion. Really, Frank, so far as being a friend is concerned, you're being the truest friend, both to Burke and his father, and to Helen, by keeping her and protecting her from herself and others--to say nothing of the real help I hope I'm being to her." "I know, I know," sighed the man, thrusting his hands into his pockets, and scowling at the toe of his shoe. "You 're a brick, Edith! It's been simply marvelous to me--the way you've taken hold. Even that first awful Sunday morning last July, when I showed you what I'd brought you, didn't quite bowl you over." "It did almost," laughed Edith; "especially when she blurted out that alarming speech, after you'd told me who she was." "What _did_ she say? I don't remember." "She said, tragically, frenziedly: 'Oh, Mrs. Thayer, you will help me, won't you?--to be swell and grand and _know_ things, so's Burke won't be ashamed of me. And if you can't make _me_ so, you will Baby, won't you? I'll do anything--everything you say. Oh, please say you will. I _know_ you're Burke's kind of folks, just to look at you, and at this--the house, and all these swell fixings! You will, won't you? Oh, please say you will!'" "Gorry! Did she say that--all that?" "Every bit of it--and more, that I can't remember. You see, I couldn't say anything--not anything, for a minute. And the more she said, the less I _could_ say. Probably she saw something of the horror and dismay in my face, and that's what made her so frenzied in her appeal." "No wonder you were struck dumb at her nerve and at mine in asking you to take her in," laughed the doctor softly. "Oh, but 'twas for only a minute. I capitulated at once, first because of the baby--she was such a dear!--then because of the mother's love for it. I thought I'd seen devotion, Frank, but never have I seen it like hers."