She felt as if she hated Oran Delaney. He was cruel and heartless, she said to herself, indignantly. What did she care for money? She had her youth and beauty, her tender heart, her desire for the pleasures of life. With all this heritage of youth she could have had happiness enough if only--if only she had not lost that fair fame, that open record of life without which all else availed her nothing. She wept bitterly for this terrible misfortune that had fallen upon her. She was young and beautiful and pure, but a great, horrible, inky blot had fallen on the whiteness of her life, and she could never wipe it out by the words of explanation that would have cleared away the hideous stain. People believed ill of her. Women, especially young and fair ones like herself, passed by her with sneers and averted faces. She was as innocent and as spotless as they were, but no one would believe it. Because she would not satisfy their curiosity they believed she was a sinner. There was one text that every one took and preached from. It was this: “Where there is secrecy there is guilt.” By this standard Aline was judged and condemned. The fierce rebellion of her heart against this unjust sentence availed her nothing. The world’s code was many hundreds of years older than she was. It said in so many words: “A woman’s life must be like an open book, that every eye may read. If there is even one leaf folded down, one page the world may not scan, then there is a shameful secret written on it.” There was one leaf folded down in the book of her life. It was as pure a record as any other; it only recorded the punishment that had come to her for her girlish willfulness and folly. But no one would believe it. She cried out against the hardness and wickedness of the world that could so misjudge her! “The world must be full of wickedness, or people would not be so ready to believe evil,” she said. The hardest part of her trouble was that her family were compelled to be sharers in her disgrace. Because they had taken her home again, because they would tell nothing of her absence, people were angry with them, too. They were all under ban alike. “My beautiful Effie, it is too bad that this shadow should rest upon her life--she who was always so much admired and beloved!” she sighed over and over. “Ah, me, if only I could speak!” But the iron fetters of her vow chafed and hurt her. There was no going back on that solemn pledge of silence. She might beat her wings as she would against the bars that held her, but there was no escape for her, no release from her sorrow. She could have exclaimed with the poet: “Oh, Life, is all thy song Endure and die?”