Part 27 (1/2)

It made Flora start, but she met it gallantly. ”Because he won't. I shall have to make him.”

”You!” For a moment Flora knew that she was preposterous in Mrs.

Herrick's eyes--and then that she was pathetic. Her companion was looking at her with a sad sort of humor. ”My dear, are you sure that that is your responsibility?”

Flora's answering smile was faint. ”It seems as strange to me as it seems absurd to you, but I think I have done something already.”

”Are you sure, or has he only let you think so? We have all at some time longed, or even thought it was our duty, to adjust something when it would have been safer to have kept our hand off,” Mrs. Herrick went on gently.

”Oh, safer,” Flora breathed. ”Oh, yes; indeed, I know. But if something had been put into your hands without your choice; if all the life of some one that you cared about depended on you, would you think of being _safe_?” Flora, leaning forward, chin in hand, with s.h.i.+ning eyes, seemed fairly to impart a reflection of her own pa.s.sionate concentration to the woman before her.

Mrs. Herrick, so calm in her reposeful att.i.tude, calm as the old portrait on the wall behind her, none the less began to show a curious sparkle of excitement in her face. ”If I were sure that person's life _did_ depend on me,” she measured out her words deliberately. ”But that so seldom happens, and it is so hard to tell.”

”But if you were sure, sure, sure!” Flora rang it out certainly.

Mrs. Herrick in her turn leaned forward. ”Ah, even then it would depend on him. And do you think you can make a man do otherwise than his nature?”

”You think I should fail?” Flora took it up fearlessly. ”Well, if I do, at least I shall have done my best. I shall have to have done my best or I can never forgive myself.”

”I see,” Mrs. Herrick sighed. ”But it sounds to me a risk too great for any reward that could come of its success.” She thought. ”If you could tell me more.” Then, as Flora only looked at her wistfully and silently: ”Isn't there some one you can confide in? Not Mrs. Britton?”

”Clara? Oh, no; never!” Flora startled Mrs. Herrick with the pa.s.sionate repudiation.

”But could not Mr. Cressy--” and with that broken sentence several things that Mrs. Herrick had been keeping back looked out of her face.

Flora answered with a stare of misery. ”I know what you must be thinking--what you can not help thinking,” she said, ”that the whole thing is unheard-of--outrageous--especially for a girl so soon to--to be--” She caught her breath with a sob, for the words she could not speak. ”But there is nothing in this disloyal to my engagement, even though I can not speak of it to Harry Cressy; and nothing I hope to gain for myself by what I am trying to do. If I succeed it will only mean I shall never see him--the other one--again.”

Mrs. Herrick rose, in her turn beseeching. ”Oh, I can't help you go into it! It is too dubious. My dear, I know so much better than you what the end may mean.”

”I know what the end may mean, and I can't keep out of it.”

”But I can not go with you.” There was a stern note in Mrs. Herrick's voice.

Flora looked around the room, the sunny windows, the still shadows, the tall, monotonous clock, as if this were the last glimpse of peace and protection she would ever have. She rose and put out her hand.

”I'm afraid I didn't quite realize how much I was asking of you. You have been very good even to listen to me. It's right, I suppose, that I should go alone.”

Mrs. Herrick looked at her in dismay. ”But that is impossible!” Then, as Flora turned away, she kept her hand. ”Think, think,” she urged, ”how you will be misunderstood.”

”Oh, I shall have to bear that--from the people who don't know.”

”Yes, and even from the one for whom you are spending yourself!”

Flora gave her head a quick shake. ”He understands,” she said.

”My dear, he is not worth it.”

Flora turned on her with anger. ”You don't know what he is worth to me!”