Her mother returned, somewhat awkwardly, to the main point.  “I hope you didn’t encourage him, Janet.”

“I don’t wish to talk of it, mother,” was Janet’s reply.  “I have not been well, and all this has upset me.”

Mrs. Whitney was gnawing her palms with her nails and her lip with her teeth.  She could scarcely restrain herself from seizing her daughter and shaking the truth, whatever it was, out of her.  But prudence and respect for her daughter’s delicate soul restrained her.

“You have made it doubly hard for me,” Janet went on.  “Your writing me to stay away because there was doubt about Arthur’s material future—­oh, mother, how could that make any difference?  If I had not been feeling so done, and if father hadn’t been looking to me to keep him company, I’d surely have gone.  For I hate to have my motive misunderstood.”

“He has worked on her soft-heartedness and inexperience,” thought Mrs. Whitney, in a panic.

“And when Arthur came to-day,” the girl continued, “I was ready to fly to him.”  She looked tragic.  “And even when he repulsed me—­”

“Repulsed you!” exclaimed Mrs. Whitney.  She laughed disagreeably.  “He’s subtler than I thought.”

“Even when he repulsed me,” pursued Janet, “with his sordid way of looking at everything, still I tried to cling to him, to shut my eyes.”

Mrs. Whitney vented an audible sigh of relief.  “Then you didn’t let him deceive you!”

“He shattered my last illusion,” said Janet, in a mournful voice.  “Mother, I simply couldn’t believe in him, in the purity of his love.  I had to give him up.”

Mrs. Whitney put her arms round her daughter and kissed her soothingly again and again.  “Don’t grieve, dear,” she said.  “Think how much better it is that you should have found him out now than when it was too late.”

And Janet shuddered.

* * * * *

Ross dropped in at the house in the Lake Drive the next morning on his way East from the Howlands.  As soon as he was alone with his mother, he asked, “How about Janet and Arthur?”

Mrs. Whitney put on her exalted expression.  “I’m glad you said nothing before Janet,” said she.  “The child is so sensitive, and Arthur has given her a terrible shock.  Men are so coarse; they do not appreciate the delicateness of a refined woman.  In this case, however, it was most fortunate.  She was able to see into his true nature.”

“Then she’s broken it off?  That’s good.”

“Be careful what you say to her,” his mother hastened to warn him.  “You might upset her mind again.  She’s so afraid of being misunderstood.”

“She needn’t be,” replied Ross dryly.

And when he looked in on Janet in her sitting room to say good-by, he began with a satirical, “Congratulations, Jenny.”

Jenny looked at him with wondering eyes.  She was drooping like a sunless flower and was reading poetry out of a beautifully bound volume.  “What is it, Ross?” she asked.