“My darling, why distress yourself about what can’t possibly concern you?” Jim said.  Julia stared at him thoughtfully for a few silent seconds.

“It does concern me.  That’s how I bought my wisdom,” she said quietly then, with no emotion deeper than a mild regret visible in her face.  Voice and manner were swept bare of passion; she seemed infinitely fatigued.  “That’s why I can’t marry you, Jim.”

“What do you mean?” Jim said easily, uncomprehendingly, the indulgent smile hardly stricken from his lips.

Julia’s eyes met his squarely across the lamplight.

“That,” she said simply.

There was a silence, and no change of expression on either face.  Then Jim stood up.

“I don’t believe it!” he said, with a short laugh.

“It’s true,” said Julia.  “I was not fifteen.  How long ago it was!  Nobody has ever known—­you need not have known.  But I am glad I told you.  I have been thinking of nothing else but telling you for two days and two nights.  And sometimes I would say to myself that what that old little ignorant Julia did would not concern you—­”

Jim made an inarticulate sound, from where he sat with his elbows on his knees, with his face dropped in his hands.

“But I see it does concern you!” Julia said, quickly, with great simplicity.  “I—­luckily I decided to tell you this morning,” she said, “for I am absolutely exhausted now.  It was a terrible thing to keep thinking about, and I could not have fought it out any longer!  There were extenuating circumstances, I suppose.  I was a spoiled little empty-headed girl; the girls all about me were reckless in everyway; I did not know the boundary-line, or dream that it mattered very much, so long as no one knew!  My mother had been unhappy in my childhood, and used to talk a good deal about the disappointment of marriage.  Perhaps I don’t make myself clear?”

“You!  Julia!” Jim whispered, his hands still over his face.

“Yes, I know,” Julia said drearily.  “I don’t seem like that sort of a girl, I know.”

Then there was a long silence.

“You—­poor—­little—­kid!” Jim said, after a while, getting up and beginning to walk the floor.  “Oh, my God!  My God!  Poor little kid!”

“I suppose there are psychological moments when one wakes up to things,” Julia went on, in a tone curiously impersonal.  “I was in some theatricals with your sister, years ago.  Every one snubbed me, and no wonder!  There was a man named Carter Hazzard—­and I suddenly seemed to wake up at about that time—­”

“Carter Hazzard!” The horror in Jim’s voice rang through the room.  Julia frowned.

“I only saw him two or three times,” she said.  “No.  But he flirted with me, and flattered me, and then Barbara told me he was married, and then I found out that they all thought I was vulgar and common—­and so I was.  And I suppose I wanted to be loved and made much of, and he—­this man—­was good to me!”