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THE BREATH OF SCANDAL

and she used to express them. Yearning for her as she had been, and as she might now be with him, he put more emphasis in, "You can't feel like yourself, and I can't feel like myself, Marjorie—I'm not even doing my work right at the office—as long as we're hiding from other people and from ourselves, dear. Sweetheart, we're just putting off, from weakness, what we know we have to face and we're making it harder for ourselves and every one else, when we have to do it in the end."

"Do what?" said Marjorie miserably, wanting no answer for of course she knew. So, for answer, he took one of her hands and held it, soft and yielding, in his own. They were sitting together on a lounge.

"Concealment, dear, is about the most dangerous thing in the world, besides putting those who help conceal almost in the position of—of the one who did the thing concealed, Marjorie," he went on. "It is concealed, suppressed acts or even only suppressed ideas and fears which bring about all sorts of abnormal states of morals and mind and even of health, the psychologists are finding out now. You can't live a lie, even if you think you're doing it successfully, without something about it getting you. And, Marjorie, you can't live with concealed—sin."

He clasped her hand firmer at that, but she let hers lie as limp and relaxed as before. She heard what he was saying but she was not thinking about it; she was thinking about him, and flashes of feeling for him, alternating with queer, dull periods of almost antagonism, surprised her. How big and healthy he was, and all clean. She was not religious; as a child she had attended Sunday school, as a matter of habit, where she had learned the ten commandments and the