Suddenly Mrs. Burton got up and began walking up and down the room with the graceful impatience which was ever characteristic of her.
For a moment, watching her, Gerry felt her old charm so deeply that temporarily she forgot her own sorrow. The peculiar shining quality which Polly O'Neill had revealed as a girl in times of keen emotion she had never lost.
"I declare, Gerry, I cannot endure the thought that you and Felipe have so spoiled your lives at the age when you should have been happiest. If anything happens, if Felipe is kept in prison for a time, what do you intend to do?"
Gerry glanced down apparently at her hands which were lightly clasped together in her lap.
When she looked up at her companion she was smiling, even if somewhat tremulously.
"I am going to work, Mrs. Burton, although it may be difficult for you to believe after the effort I have made to escape even the thought of work. But I think at last I have found something which will interest me. Mr. Morris is very kind; of course he must dislike me under the circumstances and feel I influenced Felipe, nevertheless he has asked me to live with him at the ranch indefinitely. But I won't do that, not after Felipe's trial is over. I shall do some kind of war work and I don't care now how menial or how humble it is. After a time perhaps I may learn to be useful. Felipe and I have talked things over and we want to do whatever is possible to atone for our mistake. If we only had it all to do over again! But then, of course, I realize what a foolish thing that is to say!"
"It may be foolish, Gerry, but it is universal."
After this remark Mrs. Burton did not sit down, nor did she speak again for several moments. Instead she stood, frowning and looking peculiarly determined and intense.
"Gerry, if Felipe were released from prison, do you think he would be willing to go into the army and do whatever he could to make himself a good soldier? I don't believe Felipe is a physical coward, he was merely a spiritual one. He is rash and impetuous and in a moment of actual fighting no one would be braver or perhaps more reckless. What he dreaded was the discipline, the thought of war, the having to relinquish the ease and beauty and pleasure of his daily life. Well, there must have been other boys like him, boys who fought with their own disinclination more gallantly than Felipe! Yet it would be foolish for the United States to lose a soldier for her army in order to gain a prisoner. Don't you think Mr. Morris and you also, Gerry, can persuade Felipe's judges to view the situation in this light? Let him accept whatever punishment they see fit to bestow, only they must not spoil his one chance of redeeming his mistake by fighting for his country."
Mrs. Burton might have been pleading with a court instead of addressing the solitary figure of one unhappy girl. However, she was merely thinking aloud.