Chill penury never repressed our noble rages; we never knew the sweet uses of adversity.  I did, of course, but here I am, a childless getting on in years, not apt to leave a deep impression on the coming generation.  It’s a funny world, Julie!  It’s a strange sort of civilization to pose under the name of Christ.  Christ had no double standard of morals; Christ forgave.  Law is all very well, society has its uses, I have no doubt, but there are higher standards than either!” “Well, that has come to me forcibly during the past few years,” Julia said thoughtfully.  “I wasn’t a praying small girl; how could I be?  But after I went to The Alexander, being physically clean and respectable made me long to be clean all over, I suppose, and I began to go to church, and after a while I went to confession, Rich, and I felt made over, as if all the stain of it had slipped away!  And then Jim came, and I told him all about it—–­”

“Before you were married?”

“Oh, Richie, of course!”

“Well, then, what—­if he knew—–­”

“Oh, Richie, that’s the terrible part.  For I thought it was all dead and gone, and it was all dead and gone as far as I was concerned!  But we couldn’t forget it—­it suddenly seemed a live issue all over again; it just rose and stood between us, and I felt so helpless, and poor Jim, I think he was helpless, too!”

Richard made no comment, and there was a silence.

“You know Jim wasn’t a—­wasn’t exactly a saint, Ju,” Richard said awkwardly after a while.

“I know,” she answered with a quick nod.

“I believe he was an exceptionally decent fellow, as fellows go,” pursued Richie.  “But, of course, it is the accepted thing.  On Jim’s first vacation, after he entered college, he told me he didn’t care much for that sort of thing—­we had a long talk about it.  But a year or two later there was a young woman—­he used to call her ’the little girl’—­I don’t know exactly—–­Anyway, Dad went East, there was some sort of a fuss, and I know Jim treated her awfully well—­there never was any question of that—­she never felt anything but gratitude to him, whatever grievances she had about any one else—–­”

His voice dropped.

“But it’s not the same thing,” Julia said with a sigh.

“No, I suppose not,” Richard agreed.

“Life has been too violent and too swift with me,” Julia resumed, after a while.  “If I had the past fifteen years to live over again, I would live them very differently.  I made an idol of Jim; he could do no wrong.  He wanted more bracing treatment than that; he should have been boldly faced down.  If I had been wiser, I would have treated all my marriage differently.  If I had been very wise, I should not have married at all, should have kept my own secret.  Perhaps, marrying, I should not have told him the truth; I don’t know.  Anyway, I have mixed things up hopelessly, given other people and myself an enormous amount of pain, and wrecked my life and Jim’s.  And now, when I am thirty, I feel as if I could begin to see light, begin to live—­as if now, when nothing on earth seems really important, I knew how to meet life!”