"What is goodness?" asked Baird.

Miss Amory gave him another of her sharp looks.

"You are drawing me out," she said. "I'm not really worth it. Goodness is quite different from respectability. Respectability is a strict keeping of the laws men have made to oblige other men to do or not to do the things they want done or left undone. The large meaning of the law is punishment. No law, no punishment; no punishment, no law. And man made both for man. If you keep man's law you will be respectable, but you may not be good. Jesus Christ was not respectable--no one will deny that.

Goodness, after all, means doing all kindness to all creatures, and, above all, doing no wrong to any. That's all. Are you good?"

"No," he answered, "I am not."

"You would probably find it more difficult to be so than I should," she responded. "And I find it hard enough--without being handicapped by beauty and the pleasure-loving temperament. You were started well on the road to the devil when you were born. Your very charms and virtues were ready to turn out vices in disguise. But when such things happen----" and she shrugged her lean shoulders. "As we have no one else to dare to blame, we can only blame ourselves. In a scheme so vague every man must be his own brake."

Baird drew a sharp breath. "If one only knew that early enough," he exclaimed.

Miss Amory laughed harshly.

"Yes," she said, "part of the vagueness of the scheme--if it _is_ a scheme--is that it takes half a lifetime to find it out. Before that, we are always either telling ourselves that we are not going to do any harm, or that we are under the guidance of a merciful Providence."

"That we are not going to do any harm," Baird repeated, "that we are not going to do any harm. And suddenly it's done."

"And can't be undone," Miss Amory added. "That's it."

The girl, Susan Chapman, was watching them from a window as they walked and talked. She bit her lips anxiously as she stood behind the curtain.

She was trying to imagine what they might be saying to each other.

Suppose it was something which told against her. And why should it not be so? What good could be said? Janway's Mills had borne in upon her the complete sense of her outcast state. While professing a republican independence of New England spirit, the place figuratively touched its forehead to the earth before Miss Starkweather. She lived on an income inherited from people who had owned mills instead of working them; who employed--and discharged--hands. She would have been regarded as an authority on any subject, social or moral. And yet it was she who had spoken the first lenient word to a transgressor of the unpardonable type.

Susan had been dumfounded at first, and then she had begun to be afraid that the leniency arose from some mistake Miss Amory would presently discover.

"Perhaps he's heard and he's telling her now," she said, breathlessly, as she looked into the garden. "Maybe she'll come in and order me out." She looked down at her clean dress, and a sob rose in her throat at the realisation of the mere physical comfort she had felt during the last hour or two--the comfort of being fed and clothed and enclosed within four walls. If she was to be cast back into outer darkness again it would be better to know at once.

When Baird had gone away and Miss Amory was sitting by her window, Susan appeared before her again with an ashen complexion and a set look. She stood a moment, hesitating, her hands clasping her elbows behind her back.

"You want to say something to me?" said Miss Amory.

"Yes," the girl answered. "Yes, I do--an' I don't know how. Are you sure, ma'am, are you sure you know quite how bad I have been?"

"No," said Miss Amory; "sit down and tell me, Susan."

She said it with an impartiality so serenely free from condemnation that Susan's obedient sitting down was almost entirely the result of not being able to stand up. She, so to speak, fell into a chair and leaned forward, covering her face with her hands.

"I don't believe you know," she whispered.

"By experience I know next to nothing," Miss Amory answered, "but my imagination and my reason tell me a great deal. You were not married and you had a child. You lost your health and your work----"

"I would have worked," said the girl from behind her hands, sobbingly, but without tears. "Oh, I would have worked till I dropped--I did work till I dropped. I kept fainting--Oh! I would have been glad and thankful and grateful----"

"Yes," said Miss Amory, "life got worse and worse--they all treated you as if you were a dog. Those common virtuous people are like the torturers of the Inquisition. You were hungry and cold--cold and hungry----"

"You don't know what it's like," Susan moaned. "You don't know. When you get sick and hollow and cramped, and stagger about in your bare room--and call out to yourself to ask what made you and where is it. And the wind's like ice--and you huddle in a heap----"

"And there are lights in the streets," said Miss Amory, "and it seems as if there must be something there to be given to you by somebody--somebody.

And you go out."

Susan got up, panting, and stared at her.

"You do know," she cried, almost with passion. "Somehow you've found out what it's like. I wanted you to know. I don't want you--not to understand and then of a sudden to send me away. I'm so _afraid_ of you sending me away."

"I shall not send you away for anything you have done in the past," said Miss Amory.

"I don't know what I should have done in the future, if you hadn't taken me in," Susan said. "Perhaps I should have thrown myself under a train.

But, oh!" with starting dampness in her skin, which she wiped off with a sick gesture, "I did _hate_ to let myself think of it. It wasn't the being killed--that's nothing--but feeling yourself crushed and torn and twisted--I used to stand and shake all over thinking of it. And I couldn't have gone on. I hated myself--I hated everything--most of all I hated the Thing that made me. What right had it? I hadn't done nothing to it before I was born. Seemed like it had made me just for the fun of pushing me under them wheels and seeing them tear and grind me. Oh! how I hated it!"

"So have I," said Miss Amory, her steady eyes looking more like a hawk's than ever.

Susan stared more than before. "I suppose I ought to have hated Jack Williams," she went on, her throat evidently filling, "but I never did. I loved him. Seemed like I was just his wife, that it did. I believe it always will. That's the way girls get into trouble. Some man that's got an affectionate way makes 'em believe they're as good as married. An'

then they find out it's all a lie."

"Perhaps some day you may see Jack Williams again," said Miss Amory.

"He wouldn't look at me," answered Susan.

"Perhaps you wouldn't look at him," Miss Amory remarked, with speculative slowness.

"Yes, I would," said Susan, "yes I would. I couldn't trust him same as I did before--'cause he's proved he ain't to be trusted. But if he wanted me to marry him I couldn't hold out, Miss Starkweather."

"Couldn't you?" Miss Amory said, still speculative. "No--perhaps you couldn't."

The girl wiped her eyes and added, slowly, almost as if she was thinking aloud:

"I'm not one of the strong ones--I'm not one of the strong ones--no more than little Margery was."

She said the last words with a kind of unconscious consciousness. While she uttered them her mind had evidently turned back to other times--not her own, but little Margery's.

Miss Amory drew a deep breath. She took up her knitting. She asked a question.

"You knew her very well--Margery?"

Susan drew her chair closer and looked in the old face with uncertain eyes.

"Miss Starkweather," she said, "do you think that a girl's being--like me--would make her evil-minded? Would it make her suspicion things, and be afraid of them--when there wasn't nothin'? I should think that it would," quite wistfully.

"It might," answered Miss Amory, her knitting-needles flying; "but for God's sake don't call yourself evil-minded. You'd be evil-minded if you were _glad_ to suspect--not if you were sorry and afraid."

"Glad!" with a groan. "Oh, Lord, I guess not. But I might be all wrong all the same, mightn't I?"

"Yes, you might."

"I loved her--oh, Lord, I did love her! I'd reason to," the girl went on, and her manner had the effect of frightened haste. "I've suffered awful sometimes--thinkin' in the night and prayin' there wasn't nothin'. She was such a delicate, innocent little thing. It would have killed her."

"What were you afraid of?"

"Oh, I don't know," Susan answered, hysterically. "I don't. I only knew she couldn't bear nothin' like--like lyin' awake nights gaspin' an'