“You’ve got something to be sorry for,” said Mrs. Comstock, “but likely we ain’t thinking of the same thing.  It hurts me less to know the truth, than to live in ignorance.  If Mag had the sense of a pewee, she’d told me long ago.  That’s what hurts me, to think that both of you knew Robert was not worth an hour of honest grief, yet you’d let me mourn him all these years and neglect Elnora while I did it.  If I have anything to forgive you, that is what it is.”

Wesley removed his hat and sat on a bench.

“Katharine,” he said solemnly, “nobody ever knows how to take you.”

“Would it be asking too much to take me for having a few grains of plain common sense?” she inquired.  “You’ve known all this time that Comstock got what he deserved, when he undertook to sneak in an unused way across a swamp, with which he was none too familiar.  Now I should have thought that you’d figure that knowing the same thing would be the best method to cure me of pining for him, and slighting my child.”

“Heaven only knows we have thought of that, and talked of it often, but we were both too big cowards.  We didn’t dare tell you.”

“So you have gone on year after year, watching me show indifference to Elnora, and yet a little horse-sense would have pointed out to you that she was my salvation.  Why look at it!  Not married quite a year.  All his vows of love and fidelity made to me before the Almighty forgotten in a few months, and a dance and a Light Woman so alluring he had to lie and sneak for them.  What kind of a prospect is that for a life?  I know men and women.  An honourable man is an honourable man, and a liar is a liar; both are born and not made.  One cannot change to the other any more than that same old leopard can change its spots.  After a man tells a woman the first untruth of that sort, the others come piling thick, fast, and mountain high.  The desolation they bring in their wake overshadows anything I have suffered completely.  If he had lived six months more I should have known him for what he was born to be.  It was in the blood of him.  His father and grandfather before him were fiddling, dancing people; but I was certain of him.  I thought we could leave Ohio and come out here alone, and I could so love him and interest him in his work, that he would be a man.  Of all the fool, fruitless jobs, making anything of a creature that begins by deceiving her, is the foolest a sane woman ever undertook.  I am more than sorry you and Margaret didn’t see your way clear to tell me long ago.  I’d have found it out in a few more months if he had lived, and I wouldn’t have borne it a day.  The man who breaks his vows to me once, doesn’t get the second chance.  I give truth and honour.  I have a right to ask it in return.  I am glad I understand at last.  Now, if Elnora will forgive me, we will take a new start and see what we can make out of what is left of life.  If she won’t, then it will be my time to learn what suffering really means.”