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“Oh!” the seated woman broke in, with a powerful voice, the voice that always surprised Editha from Gearson’s slender frame.”Let me see you. Stand round where the light can strike on your face,” and Editha dumbly obeyed.”So, you’re Editha Balcom,” she sighed.

“Yes,” Editha said, more like a culprit than a comforter.

“What did you come for?” Mrs. Gearson asked.

Editha’s face quivered and her knees shook.”I came–because–because George–” She could go no further.

“Yes,” the mother said, “he told me he had asked you to come if he got killed. You didn’t expect that, I suppose, when you sent him.”

“I would rather have died myself than done it!”Editha said, with more truth in her deep voice than she ordinarily found in it.”I tried to leave him free–“

“Yes, that letter of yours, that came back with his other things, left him free.”

Editha saw now where George’s irony came from.

“It was not to be read before–unless–until–I told him so,” she faltered.

“Of course, he wouldn’t read a letter of yours, under the circumstances, till he thought you wanted him to. Been sick?” the woman abruptly demanded.

“Very sick,” Editha said, with self-pity.

“Daughter’s life,” her father interposed, “was almost despaired of, at one time.”

Mrs. Gearson gave him no heed.”I suppose you would have been glad to die, such a brave person as you!I don’t believe hewas glad to die. He was always a timid boy, that way; he was afraid of a good many things; but if he was afraid he did what he made up his mind to. I suppose he made up his mind to go, but I knew what it cost him by what it cost me when I heard of it. I had been through onewar before. When you sent him you didn’t expect he would get killed.”

The voice seemed to compassionate Editha, and it was time.”No,” she huskily murmured.

“No, girls don’t; women don’t, when they give their men up to their country. They think they’ll come marching back, somehow, just as gay as they went, or if it’s an empty sleeve, or even an empty pantaloon, it’s all the more glory, and they’re so much the prouder of them, poor things!”

The tears began to run down Editha’s face; she had not wept till then; but it was now such a relief to be understood that the tears came.

“No, you didn’t expect him to get killed,” Mrs. Gearson repeated, in a voice which was startlingly like George’s again.”You just expected him to kill some one else, some of those foreigners, that weren’t there because they had any say about it, but because they had to be there, poor wretches–conscripts, or whatever they call ’em. You thought it would be all right for my George, yourGeorge, to kill the sons of those miserable mothers and the husbands of those girls that you would never see the faces of.”The woman lifted her powerful voice in a psalmlike note.”I thank my God he didn’t live to do it!I thank my God they killed him first, and that he ain’t livin’ with their blood on his hands!”She dropped her eyes, which she had raised with her voice, and glared at Editha.”What you got that black on for?” She lifted herself by her powerful arms so high that her helpless body seemed to hang limp its full length.”Take it off, take it off, before I tear it from your back!”

The lady who was passing the summer near Balcom’s Works was sketching Editha’s beauty, which lent itself wonderfully to the effects of a colorist. It had come to that confidence which is rather apt to grow between artist and sitter, and Editha had told her everything.