"She feels that she had better leave Old Chester."
"Do you think so, sir?"
Dr. Lavendar sighed. "I would like to have her here; I would like to take care of her, for a while. But I don't think she could stand it; on your account."
"My account!" William King pushed his chair back, and got on his feet;
"Dr. Lavendar, I—I—"
"She would feel the embarrassment of your knowledge," said the old man.
Dr. King sat down. Then he said, "I am the last man to judge her."
"'Beginning at the eldest, even unto the last,'" murmured Dr. Lavendar. "Shame is a curious thing, William. It's like some of your medicines. The right amount cures. Too much kills. I've seen that with hard drinkers. Where a drunkard is a poor, uneducated fellow, shame gives him a good boost towards decency. But a man of education, William, a man of opportunity—if he wakes up to what he has been doing, shame gives him such a shove he is apt to go all round the circle, and come up just where he started! Shame is a blessed thing,—when you don't get too much of it. She would get too much of it here. But—" he stopped and smiled; "sin has done its divine work, I think."
"Sin?"
"Yes," said Dr. Lavendar, cheerfully; "have you ever noticed that every single human experience—except, perhaps, the stagnation of conceit; I haven't found anything hopeful in that yet; but maybe I shall some day!—but, except for conceit, I have never known any human experience of pain or sin that could not be the gate of heaven. Mind! I don't say that it always is; but it can be. Has that ever occurred to you?"
"Well, no," the doctor confessed; "I can't say that it has."