"It isn't her fault, and it isn't yours—it isn't mine, as a matter of justice. Rose is just what she's always been, a good, sweet girl—I wouldn't have her see anything but friendly interest in my eyes for half my heart—I'm afraid she will, so—I guess——"
He was talking through set teeth. "I wish you'd tell her we can't offer her a home; I can't do it."
He rose and went to his wife. "My dear, don't cry—you've watched this thing come on in brave silence—not every wife would have kept silence so long. It won't break up our comradeship, will it, dear? We've jogged along so peacefully these fifteen years—we ought to overlook a little thing like this!" He smiled a little, then he stooped and put his arm about her.
"Come, give me a kiss, and let's adopt no more handsome girls till I'm sixty-five."
She rose and lifted her sad face to his. "It's my fault, if I—"
He kissed her and said: "No more of that! You're my faithful wife. What helps the matter materially is this—Rose thinks of me as a sober old settler now."
This ended it so far as any outward showing ever defined his feeling, but the presence of the girl never left him. At night, as he sat at his desk at the hour which almost always used to bring Rose down from her room to discuss her lessons with him, he grew sad and lonely. "If I had a child," he said to himself, "I could bear it more easily."
When Rose returned, she went into one of the co-operative boarding-houses, and slowly drifted away from the Doctor and his family. She never quite knew why. It puzzled her for a time, and then she forgot it—in the fashion of youth.