“Was that it?” asked Goodman.

“I am not saying that it was or was not.  I am not going to discuss Doctor Gordon’s secrets with you.  It’s none of your business, and none of my business.  All I am saying is this, suppose there had been a girl years ago with a very rich bachelor brother.  Suppose the brother had been jilted by a girl, and hated the whole lot of women like poison, and had no idea of getting married himself, and his sister would be his only heiress, and he had set his foot down that she should not marry Doc—­the man she had set her heart upon.  Suppose he went to—­well, the South Sea Islands, for the rest of his life, to get out of sight and sound of women like the one who had jilted him, told his sister before he went that if she married the man she wanted he would make a will and leave his money away from her, build an hospital or a library or something, suppose she hit upon the plan of marrying the man she wanted, and keeping it quiet.”

“Was that it?”

“Didn’t I tell you that I would not say whether it was or not?  I only say suppose that was the case.  Doctor Gordon has a married sister by the name of Ewing living in foreign parts.  You can see for yourself how easy it might have been.”

“What about the girl?” asked Goodman in a dry voice.

James flushed angrily.  “That is nobody’s business,” said he.  “She is Doctor Gordon’s niece.”

Goodman was unabashed.  “How does it happen her name is Ewing?” he asked.

“Couldn’t it possibly have happened that two sisters of Doctor Gordon’s married two brothers?” James cried.  He elbowed his way out.  When he was in the buggy driving home, he began to realize how the fairy tale which he had related in the store would not in the least impose upon Clemency, how she would almost inevitably hear of the statements in the papers.  He wondered more and more that Gordon should have divulged a secret which he had kept so fiercely for so long.

When he reached home he went at once into the office, and gave Gordon his mail and the New York paper.  Gordon glanced at it, then at James.  “Have you seen this?” he asked.

James nodded.

“I suppose you think me most inconsistent,” said Gordon gloomily, “but the truth is I kept the secret while Clara was alive, though I found I could not, oh, God, I could not after she was dead and gone!  I had not realized what that would mean:  to never acknowledge her as my wife, dead or alive.  I found that when it came to the death certificate, and the notice in the paper, and the erection of a stone to her memory, that I could not keep up the deception, no matter what the consequence.  My God, Elliot, I cannot commit sacrilege against the dead!  Dead, she must have her due.  I anticipated this.  There was something last night in the Stanbridge Record, and yesterday, while you were out three reporters from New York came.  I told them that I had done what I had for good and