As long as you keep that promise, you
perpetuate that wrong. The only way to end the wrong, is to break the
promise."
"Bravo, Tommy! You can't get over logic like that, Florence, dear, and
your promise did inaugurate a wrong--a wrong against yourself."
"Well, then, it's allowable to wrong oneself," said Florence.
"But not one's friends--one's true, disinterested friends. And as for
that other promise of yours--that _fearful_ promise!--you can't deny you
wronged somebody by that; somebody you had no right to wrong."
"It was a choice between him and my father," replied Florence, in a low
voice, and turning very red.
"Very well; which deserved to be sacrificed?" cried Edna, her eyes and
tone showing that the subject was a heating one. "Which was likely to
suffer more by the sacrifice? You know perfectly well fathers _don't_ die
in those cases, and consequently your father's hysterics _must_ have been
put on for effect. Oh, don't tell me!--it makes me wild to think of it!
Your father would have been all right in a week; whereas the other man's
whole life is darkened."
"Don't say that, dear," pleaded Florence, gently. "Men soon get over such
things."
"Not so awfully soon;--not sincere men. Their views of life are changed,
for all time. And _this_ man seems to grow more and more melancholy, if
what Tom says is true."
"What I say?" exclaimed Larcher.
The two girls looked at each other.
"Goodness! I _have_ given it away!" cried Edna.
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