It never occurred to the girl for a moment that this lonely, broken woman had torn her soul's deepest secret open in a last pathetic effort to warn her of the danger of her marriage. The wistful, helpless look in her eye meant to Mary only the anguish of memories. Each human heart persists in learning the big lessons of life at first hand. We refuse to learn any other way. The tragedies of others interest us as fiction. We make the application to others—never to ourselves.
Jim's familiar footstep echoed through the hall, and Mary sprang to the door with a cry of joy.
CHAPTER X. THE WEDDING
Ella hurried into the kitchenette and busied herself with dinner. Jim's unexpectedly early arrival broke the spell of the tragedy to which Mary had listened with breathless sympathy. Her own future she faced without a shadow of doubt or fear.
Her reproaches to Jim were entirely perfunctory, on the sin of his early call on their wedding-day.
“Naughty boy!” she cried with mock severity. “At this unseemly hour!”
He glanced about the room nervously.
“Anybody in there?”
He nodded toward the kitchenette.