begun was going to be exceedingly difficult. She was not a clever dissembler.

Moreover, any insincerity between herself and Sylvia would strike at the very core of the sincere, earnest companionship she hoped would spring up between them. Even should she be a more skillful fraud than she dared anticipate and succeed in playing her role convincingly, would there not loom ever before her the danger of betrayal from outside sources?

Everyone in the outlying district had known Jason for what he was. There had been no possibil[31]ity of screening the sordid melodrama from the public. Times without number one fisherman and then another had come bringing the recreant back home across the channel, and had aided in getting him into the house and to bed. His shame had been one of the blots on the upright, self-respecting community.

[31]

As a result, her private life had perforce become common property and all its wretchedness and degradation, stripped of concealment, had been spread stark beneath the glare of the sunlight.

It was because the villagers had helped her so loyally to shoulder a burden she never could have borne alone that Marcia felt toward them this abiding affection and gratitude. They might discuss her affairs if they chose; ingenuously build up romances where none existed; they might even gossip about her clothes, her friends, her expenditures. Their chatter did not trouble her. She had tried them out, and in the face of larger issues had found their virtues so admirable that their vices became, by contrast, mere trivialities.

Moreover, having watched her romance begin, flourish, and crumble; and having shared in the joy and sorrow of it, it was not only natural, but to some degree legitimate they should feel they had the right to interest themselves in her future.

[32]

[32]

Not all their watchfulness was prompted by curiosity. Some of it emanated from an impulse of guardianship—a desire to shield her from further misery and mishap. She was alone in the world, and in the eyes of the older inhabitants who had known her parents, she was still a girl—one of the daughters of the town. They did not mean to stand idly by and see her duped a second time.

The assurance that she had behind her this support; that she was respected, beloved, held blameless of the past, not only comforted but lent to her solitary existence 

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