“No one can know better than I that my nature is a faulty one, Nance—­”

“Say unfortunate, Allan—­not faulty.  I shall never again believe a fault of you.  How stupid a woman can be, how superficial in her judgments—­and what stupids they are who say she is intuitive!  Do you know, I believed in Bernal infinitely more than I can tell you, and Bernal made me believe in everything else—­in God and goodness and virtue and truth—­in all the good things we like to believe in—­yet see what he did!”

“My dear, I know little of the circumstances, but—­”

“It isn’t that—­I can’t judge him in that—­but this I must judge—­Bernal, when he saw I did not know who had been there, was willing I should think it was you.  To retain my respect he was willing to betray you.”  She laughed, a little hard laugh, and seemed to be in pain.  “You will never know just what the thought of that boy has been to me all these years, and especially this last week.  But now—­poor weak Bernal!  Poor Judas, indeed!” There was a kind of anguished bitterness in the last words.

“My dear, try not to think harshly of the poor boy,” remonstrated Allan gently.  “Remember that whatever his mistakes, he has a good heart—­and he is my brother.”

“Oh! you big, generous, good-thinking boy, you—­Can’t you see that is precisely what he lacks—­a good heart?  Oh, dearest, I needed this—­to show Bernal to me not less than to show you to me.  There were grave reasons why I needed to see you both as I see you this moment.”

There were steps along the hall and a knock at the door.

“It must be Bernal,” he said—­“he was to leave about this time.”

“I can’t see him again.”

“Just this once, dear—­for my sake!  Come!”

Bernal stood in the doorway, hat in hand, his bag at his feet.  With his hat he held a letter.  Allan went forward to meet him.  Nancy stood up to study the lines of an etching on the wall.

“I’ve come to say good-bye, you know.”  She heard the miserable embarrassment of his tones, and knew, though she did not glance at him, that there was a shameful droop to his whole figure.

Allan shook hands with him, first taking the letter he held.

“Good-bye—­old chap—­God bless you!”

He muttered, with that wretched consciousness of guilt, something about being sorry to go.

“And I don’t want to preach, old chap,” continued Allan, giving the hand a farewell grip, “but remember there are always two pairs of arms that will never be shut to you, the arms of the Church of Him who died to save us,—­and my own poor arms, hardly less loving.”

“Thank you, old boy—­I’ll go back to Hoover”—­he looked hesitatingly at the profile of Nancy—­“Hoover thinks it’s all rather droll, you know—­Good-bye, old boy!  Good-bye, Nancy.”

“My dear, Bernal is saying good-bye.”

She turned and said “good-bye.”  He stepped toward her—­seeming to her to slink as he walked—­but he held out his hand and she gave him her own, cold, and unyielding.  He went out, with a last awkward “Good-bye, old chap!” to Allan.