"'I couldn't let you go alone,' I said. Then, as I sat down opposite to her, something—it may have been her own dainty best attire—made me suddenly conscious of the shortness of my serviceable skirt, and the roughness of my tweed. 'So I am coming with you, after all,' I added; 'unless you think me too countrified, in this get-up; and will be ashamed to be seen with me in town!'

"Mrs. Mallory enveloped me, thick boots and all, in grateful smiles.

"'Oh, of course not!' she said. 'Dear Mrs. Rivers! Of course not! You are quite too kind!'

"Now, will you believe it, David? Weeks afterwards she came to me and said there was something she must tell me, as it was hindering her in her prayers, and she could not enjoy 'fully restored communion,' until she had confessed it, and thus relieved her mind.

"I thought the dear lady must, at the very least, have forged my signature to a cheque. I sat tight, and told her to proceed. She thereupon reminded me of that October morning, and said that she had thought my clothes countrified, and had felt ashamed to be seen with me in town.

"Oh, David, can you understand how it hurt? When one had given up the day, and raced to the station, and done it all to help her in her trouble. It was not so much that she had noticed that which was an obvious fact. It was the pettiness of mind which could dwell on it for weeks, and then wound the friend who had tried to be kind to her, by bringing it up, and explaining it.

"I looked at her for a moment, absolutely at a loss what to reply. At last I said: 'I am very sorry, Mrs. Mallory. But had I stopped, on that morning, to change into town clothes, I could not have caught your train.'

"'Oh, I know!' she cried, with protesting hands. 'It did not matter at all. It is only that I felt I had not been absolutely truthful.'

"Now, David—you, who are by profession a guide of doubting souls, an expounder of problems of casuistry, a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart—will you give me a pronouncement on this question? In itself it may be a small matter; but it serves to illustrate a larger problem.

"Which was the greater sin in Mrs. Mallory: to have lapsed for a moment from absolute truthfulness; or, to wound deliberately a friend who had tried to be kind to her? Am I right in saying that such an episode is the outcome of the workings of a morbid conscience? It is but one of many.