“We never used to have secrets,” she mourned dismally.  “This place has changed you so—­oh, I am simply too miserable to care for anything any more.  Go on, Marion—­I’ll get home somehow.  I shouldn’t have followed, but I was so hurt at your coldness and your lack of confidence!  And I was sure you were deceiving me.  I simply could not endure the suspense another day.  You—­you don’t know what I have suffered!  Go on—­you’ll get cold standing here.  I’ll come—­after awhile.  But I’d as soon be dead as go on in this way.  Please go on!”

Kate may have been a bit hysterical; at any rate, she really believed herself utterly indifferent to her sprained ankle and the chance of freezing.  She closed her eyes again and waved Marion away, and Marion immediately held her closer and patted her shoulder and kissed her remorsefully.

“Now, don’t cry, dear—­you’ll have me crying in a minute.  Be a good sport and see if you can’t walk a little.  I’ll help you.  And once you’re back by the fire, and have your ankle all comfy, and a cup of hot chocolate, you’ll feel heaps better.  Hang tight to me, dear, and I’ll help you up.”

It was a long walk for a freshly sprained ankle, and the whiteness of Kate’s face stamped deeper into Marion’s conscience the guilty sense of being to blame for it all.  She had started in by teasing Kate over little things, just because Kate was so inquisitive and so lacking in any sense of humor.  She could see now that she had antagonized Kate where she should have humored her little whims.  It wouldn’t have done any harm, Marion reflected penitently, to have confided more in Kate.  She used to tell her everything, and Kate had always been so loyal and sympathetic.

Penitence of that sort may go to dangerous lengths of confession if it is not stopped in time.  Nothing checked Marion’s excited conscience.  The ankle which she bared and bathed was so swollen and purple that any lurking suspicion of the reality of the hurt vanished, and Marion cried over it with sheer pity for the torture of that long walk.  Kate’s subdued sadness did the rest.

So with Kate, lying on the couch near the fire and with two steaming cups of chocolate between them on an up-ended box that sturdily did its duty as a table, Marion let go of her loyalty to one that she might make amends to another.  She told Kate everything she knew about Jack Corey, down to the exact number of times she had bought cigarettes and purloined magazines and papers for him.  Wherefore the next hour drew them closer to their old intimacy than they had been since first they came into the mountains; so close an intimacy that they called each other dearie while they argued the ethics of Jack’s case and the wisdom—­or foolishness—­of Marion’s championship of the scapegoat.

“You really should have confided in me long ago—­at the very first inkling you had of his identity,” Kate reiterated, sipping her chocolate as daintily as ever she had sipped at a reception.  “I can scarcely forgive that, dearie.  You were taking a tremendous risk of being maligned and misunderstood.  You might have found yourself terribly involved.  You are so impulsive, Marion.  You should have come straight to me.”