“She’s got to see you!” John Paul said angrily. “What’s the matter with her? Is she out of her senses? All I know is what Kate told me. She asked me to bring you the letter. She said Amy had broken her engagement. You could have knocked me over with a straw. She wouldn’t give any reasons. But I’m touched by this business. If a woman in my household suddenly forgets honor and common decency, I’m touched by it! Unless you’ve given her cause?” He walked up and down, breathing hard, his hands thrust into his pockets, jingling his latchkeys for the mere relief of doing something. William West put the little note into his pocket. “I’ve given her cause,” he said. His senior warden stopped in front of him, and looked at him critically. “You’re lying to me. I know you! It’s a girl’s whim, and I’m touched by it, I tell you. She’s a member of my family. I shall see her (she wouldn’t see me before I started here), and straighten this business out. Kate is nearly dead with it. My wife looked like a ghost when she came and told me--and the wedding day after to-morrow! No; I’m going to straighten this thing out. What I want you to do is to tell me, man to man, what started it?” “Amy is perfectly justified,” William West said dully. “I told her this morning that I had committed a forgery.” “A--?” John Paul sat down, his mouth open, his plump hands on his knees, his eyes starting from his head. “You are out of your mind!” William West laughed shortly. “I think, perhaps, I was when I told her. Yes; I was a fool. It was twenty-three years ago; I had just about forgotten it. When I remembered, I told her. It was too much for her. She is right to stop now. If she can throw me over, thank Heaven she has done so!” The bitterness of it burst out in that last sentence. Then, quietly, he told Amy’s cousin the story of that long-buried youth. When it was done, John Paul said huskily:-- “West, I don’t know what to think of your telling her; but I know what to think of you. And I know what to think of Amy.” William West said nothing; he took the little note out of his pocket and turned it over and over. (“He seemed to go to pieces before my eyes,” John Paul told his wife. “I tell you, Kate, I saw him lose his moral grip! Poor West--poor fellow!”) Mr. Paul sat helplessly looking at his clergyman, until he had a sense of indecency in watching the suffering of this silent human creature. Then he said vaguely:-- “I suppose you want me to clear out? But just tell me; what do you want me to do?” “Nothing.” “But don’t you mean to make any effort to bring her to her senses?” burst out the other. “There’s nothing to be done,” the lover said. “It’s over--don’t you see?”