“It is nothing now,” he insisted, passionately. Accustomed to weigh other people’s actions and motives, he knew that he was discriminating with almost judicial impartiality when he thus looked himself in the face. “_A repentant man has no more to do with his sin, for which he has repented and made reparation, than a well man has to do with the disease of which he has been cured._” He remembered that he had used this illustration once to some one else; he must apply it now to himself. No; he was not deceiving Amy. He was only sparing her--sparing her, to be sure, from a pain she might wish to bear, but that had nothing to do with the question. If she knew, she would suffer; not from a fact, but from an illusion; for he would be confessing a sin which was not his sin. Honor? The word seemed artificial as he thus put the situation before him. No; it would be cowardly to tell her, and it would be untrue. There was nothing for him to do but face the fact that, to spare her, he must bear, for the rest of his life, the wretched burden of realizing that he had a secret from her. Sanely, truly, this good man believed that his impulse to tell the woman he loved was selfish and cowardly; it was an impulse to make her share a burden which he deserved to bear alone. Furthermore, it was the effect, not of reason, not of religion, not of love; it was the effect, first, of the selfish desire to seek relief by sharing a cruel knowledge; secondly, of a traditional sentimentality, the weak and driveling outcome of that sense of justice which is expressed in the willingness to bear consequences. Well, the boy who had sinned had borne the consequences; he had suffered. For the man to suffer now, twenty-three years after, was unreasonable, but inevitable. For a woman, who had no part or lot in that young past, to suffer now, twenty-three years afterwards, was foolish and useless. If the man permitted it, he was a coward and a fool. This, at least, was what William West told himself. IV The conclusion to which the Rev. Mr. West came was that, if his love for Amy was deep enough and unselfish enough, he would hold his tongue. He believed that confession, apart from reparation, was the refuge of the weak mind. Having thus decided to bear alone the burden of his secret, he went, early in the morning, and told the woman he loved. Of course, there is no explanation of this vacillation and indifference to his own judgment, except the mere statement that he was in love. “Amy is trying on her dress,” Mrs. Paul said, when he was ushered into the library, “so, if you want to see her, you can go home at once. But perhaps you may condescend to talk to me a little while?” “I must see Amy, please,” he said. He had a way of putting people aside so gently and peremptorily that Mrs. Paul, who was not a yielding person, never dreamed of protesting. “I’ll tell her. But she really can’t come down for ten minutes. Do you mind waiting?”