The two women were in Cousin Patty’s room.  They were too excited to sleep, for the events of the day had been stimulating.  Cousin Patty had suggested that Mary should get into something comfortable, and come back and talk.  And Mary had come, in a flowing blue gown with her fair hair in shining braids.  They were alone together for the first time since Cousin Patty’s arrival.  It was a moment for which Mary had waited eagerly, yet now that it had come to her, she hardly knew how to begin.

But when she spoke, it was with an impulsive reaching out of her hands to the older woman.

“Cousin Patty, tell me about Roger Poole.”

Cousin Patty hesitated, then asked a question, almost sharply, “My dear, why did you fail him?”

The color flooded Mary’s face.  “Fail him?” she faltered.

“Yes.  When he first came to me, there were your letters.  He used to read bits of them aloud, and I could see inspiration in them for him.  Then he stopped reading them to me, and they seemed to bring heaviness with them—­I can’t tell you how unhappy he was until he began to make his work fill his life.  Do you mind telling me what made the change in you, my dear?”

Mary gazed into the fire, the blood still in her face.

“Cousin Patty, did you know his wife?”

“Yes.  Is it because of her, Mary?”

“Yes.  After Roger went away, I saw her picture.  Colin had painted it.  And, Cousin Patty, it seemed the face of such a little—­saint.”

“Yet Roger told you his story?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t believe him?”

“Oh, I don’t know what to believe.”

“I see,” but Cousin Patty’s manner was remote.

Mary slipped down to the stool at Cousin Patty’s feet, and brought her clear eyes to the level of the little lady’s.  “Dear Cousin Patty,” she implored, “if you only know how I want to believe in Roger Poole.”

Cousin Patty melted.  “My dear,” she said with decision, “I’m going to tell you everything.”

And now woman’s heart spoke to woman’s heart.  “I visited them in the first year of their marriage.  I wanted to love his wife, and at first she seemed charming.  But I hadn’t been there a week before I was puzzling over her.  She was made of different clay from Roger.  In the intimacy of that home I discovered that she wasn’t—­a lady—­not in our nice old-fashioned sense of good manners, and good morals.  She said things that you and I couldn’t say, and she did things.  I felt the catastrophe in the air long before it came.  But I couldn’t warn Roger.  I just had to let him find out.  I wasn’t there when the blow fell; but I’ll tell you this, that Roger may have been a quixotic idiot in the eyes of the world, but if he failed it was because he was a dreamer, and an idealist, not a coward and a shirk.”  Her eyes were blazing.  “Oh, if you could hear what some people said of him, Mary.”