“Look,” she said, “it looks soft and white, doesn’t it, but the dreadful scarlet brand has scorched for years; it’s burning there now. It always will. I can see that for your sake, for the sake of the business, I must go on hiding it until I die. Personally, it would be almost a relief to stand up outside our door or before the altar in the church, and tell every one what I have told you.” Nancy Bodkin was doing some crying for herself at that minute, but presently she wiped her eyes and surprised even herself with the joy of her inspiration. “That isn’t necessary,” she said. “It wouldn’t help in any way. The thing you must do is to go to God. Tell Him what you have told me. Ask His help. Your sin is against God. He will forgive a woman whose greatest fault is that she loved the wrong man; that she loved a man who betrayed her and used her for his purposes when he should have sheltered her and sustained her. God is great and He is merciful.” Nancy helped Marcia to her feet. She led her to the door of her room, and opening it, she shoved her through. “Go and make your peace with God,” she said. “I have nothing to forgive you. If He has, He will know about it and He will let you feel His forgiveness and His love.” She shut the door, and going back to her work table, she sat down, and with steady hands, she sheared, twisted, and sewed, and by and by, when Marcia came from her room with peace in her heart and less pain in her eyes, the little milliner almost paralysed her. She held up a thing that was really a creation and she cried gayly: “Go wash and powder your nose and get ready to try this! I believe it’s the damnedest best-looking hat that I’ve ever made!” CHAPTER XIX “REBECCA PRONOUNCES JUDGMENT” The seasons run with swift feet. It was in February that Mahala answered a hasty knock at her door. She jumped into her coat and overshoes and hurried down the road through the snow and the storm of a wild night on the shaking arm of Jason. She could see that the house to which she was going was filled with light. When she entered it, she found Ellen’s mother in charge and Doctor Grayson at work. An hour later, through one of those queer turns of fate which no one can explain, it became her part of the thing that was taking place there to carry a small, warm bundle, strongly suggestive of olive oil and castile, and lay it in the arms of Jason. It seemed to Mahala as she carried Jason his son that the bitterness which at that minute surged up in her heart surpassed anything else she ever had known. She turned from him and went to lay her hand on the head of Ellen. There it was her mission to report that Jason thought his son was fine and wonderful.