“Happy!”

“Perhaps ‘happy’ is not the word.  I should say unmiserable.  I am more unmiserable than I have ever been, I think, since I was born.”

Deb’s swift intelligence grasped the truth.  “Ah, then she was not so insensate as we thought!”—­but made allowance for what she diagnosed as a morbid condition of mental health.

“Are you happier than you were at Redford—­young, and loved, and with everything nice about you—?”

“Yes.  Because then, although, of course, I did have everything, I had no idea of the value of what I had.  You can’t be really happy unless you know that you are happy.  I did not know it then, but now I do.”

Deb’s glance flashed round the poor room, and out of the window into the squalid street; she thought of Bob, who almost openly despised the mother who adored him; she calculated the loneliness, the poverty, the —­to her—­ugliness of the existence which Mary’s “as I am” was intended to describe; and she groaned aloud.

“Oh, my dear, was it really so awful as that—­that the mere relief from it can mean so much to you?”

“I am not going to complain,” said Mary.  “It was not awful by anybody’s fault—­certainly not by his.  He did his best; he was really good to me.  It could not have happened at all, except through his being good to me—­doing what he did that night.  I am not in the least bitter against him; he was as he was made just as I am.  It had to be, I suppose.  The maker of the puppets didn’t care whether we belonged or not; the hand that pulled the strings, and tangled them, jerked us into the mire together anyhow—­” “Oh, don’t!” pleaded Deb.  “Don’t blaspheme like that!  What is religion for if not to keep us from making blunders, and to help us to bear it when they are made—­and to trust—­to trust where we cannot see—­”

Deb was unused to preaching, and broke down; but her eyes were sermons more impressive than any of the thousands that Mary had heard.

“Some day,” said Mary, “when I get into a place where I cannot hear religion spoken of, nor see it practised, I may learn the value of it.  I hope so.  I have a chance of it now—­the way is clear.  I am through the wood at last.”

Deb drew her filmy handkerchief across her eyes.

“Yes, I know.”  Mary smiled at her sister’s grief.  “But it is only for this once, Debbie dear.  I did want to let you know—­to have the delight of not being a liar and a shuffler for once.  I shall not say such things again.  I am not going to shock anybody else, for Bob’s sake.  Bob, of course, must be considered; after all, it was his father.  None of us, even the freest, can be a free agent altogether; I understand that.  I shall hold my tongue.  The blessed thing is that that will be sufficient—­a negative attitude, with the mouth shut; one is not driven any longer to positive deceit, without even being able to say that you can’t help it.  Oh, Debbie, you have been a free woman—­ why, why didn’t you keep so?—­but with all your freedom, and all your money, you don’t know the meaning of such luxury as I live in now.”