“Sit by me,” she said.

Miss Fenno dropped beside her.  In both women the stress of emotion was too strong for speech.  The girl was still trembling, and Mrs. Quentin was the first to regain her composure.

“You say you’ve suffered,” she began at last.  “Do you suppose I haven’t?”

“I knew you had.  That made it so much worse for me—­that I should have been the cause of your suffering for Alan!”

Mrs. Quentin drew a deep breath.  “Not for Alan only,” she said.  Miss Fenno turned on her a wondering glance.  “Not for Alan only. That pain every woman expects—­and knows how to bear.  We all know our children must have such disappointments, and to suffer with them is not the deepest pain.  It’s the suffering apart—­in ways they don’t understand.”  She breathed deeply.  “I want you to know what I mean.  You were right—­that day—­and I was wrong.”

“Oh,” the girl faltered.

Mrs. Quentin went on in a voice of passionate lucidity.  “I knew it then—­I knew it even while I was trying to argue with you—­I’ve always known it!  I didn’t want my son to marry you till I heard your reasons for refusing him; and then—­then I longed to see you his wife!”

“Oh, Mrs. Quentin!”

“I longed for it; but I knew it mustn’t be.”

“Mustn’t be?”

Mrs. Quentin shook her head sadly, and the girl, gaining courage from this mute negation, cried with an uncontrollable escape of feeling: 

“It’s because you thought me hard, obstinate narrow-minded?  Oh, I understand that so well!  My self-righteousness must have seemed so petty!  A girl who could sacrifice a man’s future to her own moral vanity—­for it was a form of vanity; you showed me that plainly enough—­how you must have despised me!  But I am not that girl now—­indeed I’m not.  I’m not impulsive—­I think things out.  I’ve thought this out.  I know Alan loves me—­I know how he loves me—­and I believe I can help him—­oh, not in the ways I had fancied before—­but just merely by loving him.”  She paused, but Mrs. Quentin made no sign.  “I see it all so differently now.  I see what an influence love itself may be—­how my believing in him, loving him, accepting him just as he is, might help him more than any theories, any arguments.  I might have seen this long ago in looking at you—­as he often told me—­in seeing how you’d kept yourself apart from—­from—­Mr. Quentin’s work and his—­been always the beautiful side of life to them—­kept their faith alive in spite of themselves—­not by interfering, preaching, reforming, but by—­just loving them and being there—­” She looked at Mrs. Quentin with a simple nobleness.  “It isn’t as if I cared for the money, you know; if I cared for that, I should be afraid—­”

“You will care for it in time,” Mrs. Quentin said suddenly.

Miss Fenno drew back, releasing her hand.  “In time?”

“Yes; when there’s nothing else left.”  She stared a moment at the pictures.  “My poor child,” she broke out, “I’ve heard all you say so often before!”