“I want to ask your opinion about something.  It’s a question I am obliged to decide now I am going back to England.”

Eleanor smiled inquiringly.  She was not a little curious to have a glimpse into her cousin’s mind just now.

“You remember,” pursued Miriam, leaning forward on a table by which she sat, and playing with a twisted piece of paper, “that I once had the silly desire to build a chapel at Bartles.”

She reddened in hearing the words upon her own lips—­so strange a sound they had after all this time.

“I remember you talked of doing so,” replied Eleanor, with her usual quiet good-nature.

“Unfortunately, I did more than talk about it.  I made a distinct promise to certain people gravely interested.  The promise was registered in a Bartles newspaper.  And you know that I went so far as to have my plans made.”

“Do you feel bound by this promise, my dear?”

Miriam propped her cheek on one hand, and with the other kept rolling the piece of paper on the table.

“Yes,” she answered, “I can’t help thinking that I ought to keep my word.  How does it strike you, Eleanor?”

“I am not quite clear how you regard the matter.  Are you speaking of the promise only as a promise?”

It was no use.  Miriam could not tell the truth; she could not confess her position.  At once a smile trembled scornfully upon her lips.

“What else could I mean?”

“Then it seems to me that the obligation has passed away with the circumstances that occasioned it.”

Miriam kept her eyes on the table, and for a few moments seemed to reflect.

“A promise is a promise, Eleanor.”

“So it is.  And a fact is a fact.  I take it for granted that you are no longer the person who made the promise.  I have a faint recollection that when I was about eight years old, I pledged myself, on reaching maturity, to give my nurse the exact half of my worldly possessions.  I don’t feel the least ashamed of having made such a promise, and just as little of not having kept it.”

Miriam smiled, but still had an unconvinced face.

“I was not eight years old,” she said, “but about four-and-twenty.”

“Then let us put it in this way.  Do you still feel a desire to benefit that religious community in Bartles?  Would it distress you to think that they shook their heads in mentioning your name?”

“I do feel rather in that way,” Miriam admitted slowly.

“But is this enough to justify you in giving them half or more of all you possess?  You spoke of pulling down Redbeck House, and building on the site, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“In any case, should you ever live there again?”

“Never.”

“You prefer to be with us in London?”

“I think you have been troubled with me quite long enough.  Perhaps I might take rooms.”

“If you are as willing to share our house as we are to have you with us, there can be no need for you to live alone.”