Miriam, still holding her other hand, patted it comfortingly. "No one is infallible, Miss Taylor. I once felt just as you do to-night. Only I am quite sure that my fault was much graver than yours can possibly be."
Mildred raised her head with a jerk. She looked at Miriam incredulously. "I don't think you ever did anything very contemptible," she said sceptically.
"Let me tell you about it," replied Miriam soberly. "Then you can judge for yourself. The person whom I wronged has long since forgiven me, but I can never quite forgive myself or forget. It was during my first year in high school that I began behaving very badly toward a new girl in the freshman class, of whom I was jealous. I was the star pupil of the class until she came, then she proved herself my equal if not my superior in class standing, and I tried in every way to discredit her in the eyes of her teachers and her friends. At the end of the freshman year, a sum of money was offered as a prize to the freshman who averaged highest in her final examinations. Feeling sure that this other girl would win it, I managed, with the help of some one as dishonest as myself, to gain possession of the examination questions, but before I had finished with them, I was obliged to drop them in a hurry, to escape discovery by the principal. By the merest chance the girl I disliked happened along just in time to be suspected of tampering with the papers. But she had friends who fought loyally for her and cleared her of the suspicion.
"She won the prize. Nothing was ever said to me about it, but I knew that the principal and at least four girls in school knew what I had done. When I entered the sophomore class in the fall I felt a positive hatred for this girl and for her friends. I did all sorts of cruel, despicable things that year, and succeeded in dividing my class into two factions who opposed each other at every point.
"Toward the last of the year I grew tired of being so disagreeable. My conscience began to trouble me seriously. Then, one day, the two girls I despised did me a great service, and my enmity toward them died out forever.
"I can't begin to tell you how differently I felt after I had acknowledged my fault and been forgiven. Those girls are my dearest friends now. You know them, too."
"You—you don't mean Miss Harlowe and Miss Pierson?" asked Mildred in a low tone, her eyes fixed upon Miriam.
Miriam nodded. "Grace and Anne are the most charitable girls I ever knew," she said softly, "If they were not they would never have forgiven me. Anne was the girl who won the prize. Grace was one of the friends who stood by her. If you feel that you have done some one an injustice, you will not be happy until you have righted matters. If the person refuses to forgive you, you at least will have done your part."
"I can't go to the—the—person and tell her," faltered Mildred. "I should die of humiliation."
"But you don't wish to go away from Overton carrying this burden with you," persisted Miriam. "It will weigh heavily upon you when you come back next fall—"