“You could never change places in my estimation.”
Bettina laughed.
“No, I never anticipated such an honor. But come let us go back to the cabin, the darkness is nearly upon us. Isn’t the evening exquisite? See the little half moon rising there above our lake! I am sorry, but I cannot stay out longer, I promised I would not. It has been nice to have this little talk with you.”
CHAPTER XVII
Closed In
The week following the end of the Christmas holidays, Mary Gilchrist said good-by to her Camp Fire group and returned home.
She had made her confession to Mrs. Graham, to the Camp Fire guardian and to the girls themselves. If they were surprised or disappointed, the decision to leave Tahawus cabin was Gill’s own.
No one precisely understood the situation. Save for Peggy Webster, Gill had appeared the frankest and most straightforward of their number. The accident to the manuscript was unavoidable, her refusal to confess the accident, her evasion of the truth as little like Gill as any one could imagine.
Nor could Gill explain even to herself her unexpected deceit and cowardice. She was more astonished, more disappointed in her own character than any one else.
Her talk with her Camp Fire guardian upon this subject she felt she would always remember.
“My dear, of course I am grieved and in a way angry. You have forced Mrs. Graham, whom I love better than most persons, to bear a sense of guilt and a burden of responsibility that was your’s and not her own. I have seldom seen Betty more worried and it has affected the pleasure of her winter with me which I desired to be especially happy. Yet the fact that you have committed the very fault you believed most foreign to you is not so unusual as you consider it, Gill dear. Life has a fashion of tricking us in our preconceived notions of ourselves. She has done the same thing to me and it is one of her bitterest lessons. Of course one has only to try to see that she does not succeed again. I wish you did not feel you were forced to leave the Camp Fire because of your fault. If membership in the Camp Fire demanded perfection I am afraid our number would not be large. You know it only demands an ideal and the effort of getting up and going on after a mistake or a downfall which brings one nearer the ultimate goal.”