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 when he talked over his father with Alice, that his; father had this weapon in his hands; yet the stroke from it when dealt, was heavier than he dreamed it could be.

"Why, David!" Fidelia cried in alarm arid hurried around the table to him. "What's happened at home?"

He had no choice but to tell her and she set at once to comforting him. It hurt her, too; oh, he knew that; but he had no idea how piteously she was hurt.

He required several days to determine what to do and finally he sent his usual check to the bank at Itanaca with orders to open a special account to his mother's order and he wrote his mother telling her what he had done and saying that, whether or not she used the money, he would continue to deposit it for her.

Fidelia took even longer to fix upon her action. She thought it over entirely alone, except for her diary, and she acted without telling David anything about it. She recorded her final decision on her diary page for the second of September.

"It is the only thing for me to do. It will finish everything for me or make everything right forever. I think I want to do it. I've got to now, anyway."

Thereupon she descended to the hotel store-room where was her strong trunk, with the excellent lock, which defended the volumes of the record of Fidelia Netley, what she had done and what she had thought about her doings, since she was ten years old.

From the pile of books, she abstracted that volume with charred covers which twice she had thrown into