“Billy asked me to go with him on this awful whale hunt!” I sobbed out to comfort myself with the thought that somebody did care for me, regardless of just how I was further embarrassing and complicating myself in the affairs of the two men I had thought I owned and was now finding out that I had to give up.  I wish I had been looking at him, for I felt him start, but he said in his big friendly voice that is so much—­and never enough for me.

“Well, why not you and Al come along and make it a family party, if that is what suits Bill, the boss?”

If men would just buy good, sharp, kitchen knives and cut out women’s hearts in a businesslike way it would be so much kinder of them.  Why do they prefer to use dull weapons that mash the life out slowly?  Everything is at an end for me to-night and that blow did it.  It was a horrible cruel thing for him to say to me!  I know now that I have been in love with John Moore for longer than my honor lets me admit and that I’ll never love anybody else, and that also I have offered myself to him served up in every known enticement and have had to be refused at least twice a day for a year.  A widow can’t say she didn’t understand what she was doing, even to herself, but—­My humiliation is complete and the only thing that can make me ever hold up my head is to puzzle him by—­by happily marrying Alfred Bennett—­and quick!

Of course, he must suspect how I feel about him, for two people couldn’t both be so ignorant as not to see such an enormous thing as my love for him is, and I was the blind one.  But he must never, never know that I ever realized it, for he is so good that it would distress him.  I must just go on in my foolish way with him until I can get away.  I’ll tell him I’m sorry I was so indignant to-night and say that I think it will be fine for him to take my Billy away from me with him.  I must smile at the idea of having my very soul amputated, insist that it is the only thing to do, and pack up the little soul in a steamer trunk with the smile.  Just smile, that is all!  Life demands smiles from a woman even if she must crush their perfume from her own heart; and she generally has them ready.

Oh, Molly, Molly, is it for this you came into the world, twice to give yourself without love?  What difference does it make that your arms are strong and white if they can’t clasp him to the softness and fragrance of your breast?  Why are your eyes blue pools of love if they are not for his questioning and what are your rose lips for if they quench not his thirst?

[Illustration:  What are your rose lips for]

Yes, I know God is very tender with a woman and I think He understands, so if she crept very close to Him and caught at His sleeve to steady herself He would be kind to her until she could go on along her own steep way.  Please, God, never let him find out, for it would hurt him to have hurt me!

LEAF EIGHT