Perhaps I was wrong, perhaps I was right." "Was it because you wanted to separate me from a child I was fond of ?" "Yes." "And your idea was that because her mother was a flighty woman with bad taste and the wrong surrounding her poor little girl would contaminate me ?" "It was because her mother was a light woman and all her friends were like her.

And your affection for the child was not like a child's affection." "No, it wasn't," he said and he leaned forward with his forehead in his hands.
"I wanted to put an end to it before it was too late.

I saw nothing but pain in it for you.

It filled me with heart-broken fear to think of the girl such a mother and such a life would make." "She was such a little thing--" said Donal, "-- such a tender mite of a thing! She's such a little thing even now." "Is she ?" said Helen.
Now she knew he would not tell her.

And she was right.