“Perhaps,” Mary Enderby suggested, colorlessly, “he will be devoted to his own people.”  She had a cold fascination in the picture Bessie’s words had conjured up, and she was saying this less to Bessie than to herself.

“And I should meet them—­his mothers and sisters!” Bessie dramatized an excess of anguish.  “Oh, Mary, that is the very thorn I have been trying not to press my heart against; and does your hand commend it to my embrace?  His folks!  Yes, they would be folks; and what folks!  I think I am getting a realizing sense.  Wait!  Don’t speak don’t move, Molly!” Bessie dropped her chin into her hand, and stared straight forward, gripping Mary Enderby’s hand.

Mary withdrew it.  “I shall have to go, Bessie,” she said.  “How is your aunt?”

“Must you?  Then I shall always say that it was your fault that I couldn’t get a realizing sense—­that you prevented me, just when I was about to see myself as others see me—­as you see me.  She’s very well!” Bessie sighed in earnest, and her friend gave her hand a little pressure of true sympathy.  “But of course it’s rather dull here, now.”

“I hate to have you staying on.  Couldn’t you come down to us for a week?”

“No.  We both think it’s best to be here when Alan gets back.  We want him to go down with us.”  Bessie had seldom spoken openly with Mary Enderby about her brother; but that was rather from Mary’s shrinking than her own; she knew that everybody understood his case.  She went so far now as to say:  “He’s ever so much better than he has been.  We have such hopes of him, if he can keep well, when he gets back this time.”

“Oh, I know he will,” said Mary, fervently.  “I’m sure of it.  Couldn’t we do something for you, Bessie?”

“No, there isn’t anything.  But—­thank you.  I know you always think of me, and that’s worlds.  When are you coming up again?”

“I don’t know.  Next week, some time.”

“Come in and see me—­and Alan, if he should be at home.  He likes you, and he will be so glad.”

Mary kissed Bessie for consent.  “You know how much I admire Alan.  He could be anything.”

“Yes, he could.  If he could!”

Bessie seldom put so much earnest in anything, and Mary loved (as she would have said) the sad sincerity, the honest hopelessness of her tone.  “We must help him.  I know we can.”

“We must try.  But people who could—­if they could—­” Bessie stopped.

Her friend divined that she was no longer speaking wholly of her brother, but she said:  “There isn’t any if about it; and there are no ifs about anything if we only think so.  It’s a sin not to think so.”

The mixture of severity and of optimism in the nature of her friend had often amused Bessie, and it did not escape her tacit notice in even so serious a moment as this.  Her theory was that she was shocked to recognize it now, because of its relation to her brother, but her theories did not always agree with the facts.