though my blind soul missed you. From the first it strained toward you; but you were too far, too high. Oh, my love it has been you,-you always!"

"Hush! You must not say that!

Remember-remember-"

"I remember my dead no less, because I speak truth to the living! A man's loves may be many, yet his true love but one. Under light or base fancies he still has his ideal. The superficially fickle are often faithful at heart. Susceptibility is no disprover of exclusive devotion. No woman can judge a man justly."

"I think what men claim of women as justice,-is mercy!" "Then grant me such mercy as women grant men. Do not deny me the chance that is the redemption of others. I have tried to grow worthy of you,-you must have seen that I tried, Gladys! Of course I have failed. Yet the effort-"

"You-have-not-failed," she said, softly. "Yes, I have seen your good fight. If the present were all" Her speech. halted.

"The present is only the promise of the future that is in your own hands."

"And the past?"

"Is past! Why rake over cold ashes?"

"Because the flame of the past kindled the fire of the future. Only by looking behind can we see before us!" "You distrust me?"

She did not answer. What, in truth, could she answer without wounding,-insulting him? She knew her own meaning only vaguely, unspeakably. How could she define her troubled wonder, her confused convictions, her intuitive doubts, her uncomprehended fears? But she had no need to analyze her conflicting thoughts. Each and all were Joyce's bitter knowledge.

He paled; yet his voice strengthened. Emotion was conquered by resolution. Here was no ignorant girl, but an earnest woman. He must meet her, every inch a man!

"Gladys," he said, "vague suspicion is more fatal than fullest knowledge. And you are noble enough to forgive-"

His words failed. An anguish of remorse, born of tenderness, racked him. That she should have to forgive,-this pure, sweet, sinless woman, bowed before him as a rose bends to

"Imogen" he began, but she interrupted him sternly. "There is nothing for me to forgive in your love for the woman who was your wife," she said.

"Then does it wrong you that my boyhood's sweetheart came and went with my native town's school-girl belle?" he demanded. "Or that between Mina and me-Mina, in life only a beautiful child to me; in death, as a dear little sister, -were youthful romanticism and springtime sentiment? Gladys, these were love's fledgling flutterings."

"And then?" she pressed, inexorably. Her face was set, her brows frowning. There was something for her to forgive. What was it?

Joyce paused to take breath.

His heart fainted within him,

yet save in truth where was his worth, his hope?

"And then,-yes, there was one madness of youth,-I will not lie to you. It wronged her who afterwards became my wife. It wrongs you, for whose love I am unworthily suing! Yet to forgive wrong,-ah, Gladys, that is woman-love, wifelove! Think before you deny me, dear--think!"

"Oh! I cannot think," cried Gladys, hopelessly. She clinched her hands, and swayed to and fro in pain of spirit so acute that it simulated physical anguish. What was right? What was wrong? Her heart strained and ached like a thing. rent asunder. Why should sweet and pure love not come sweetly and purely, instead of thus sorely to hurt, thus sullied to humiliate her? All unconsciously she was rebelling against womanhood's bitter lesson that

"Love's feet are softly shod with pain."

What sad pain love had cost her even from its earliest nascence ! She recalled the spiritual hurt Joyce's jaunty soullessness had dealt her at first,-a hurt significant of a human side prophetic of present developments, though at the time she had failed to recognize it. The vague sorrow his worldly letters had caused her in Europe recurred to her, her deeper pain of disillusion, of desecration, and her revulsion not only from a potential guilt of the man, but from the woman so lightly hinting of moral flaw, when after their return, on the occasion of Joyce's social function, Imogen had whispered her suspicion, now justified by Joyce's own confession. Since the

mise with evil, Gladys had become more worldly-wise, more mature in knowledge of life, less intolerant in her judgments of human nature. Yet the pure woman's revulsion from abstract evil suddenly personified, the pain and profanation of love sullied and therefore unworthy, hurt her tender soul with the realization of the infinite pathos of sin. Heaven and earth, God and man profaned, desecrated, ruthlessly, heedlessly, all the beauty of the Divine conception of human life blurred, degraded, beautiful youth marred and dishonored, noble intellect debased, the heart polluted, the Christian soul self-sunk from star to mire, and all to what end, save late remorse, bitter penalty? Through her tears her woman-eyes flashed piteous protest,-the pure supplication wherewith women and angels alike strive against mortal men!

The musical monotone of the water, the sigh of swaying palm and breeze- thrilled flower, contrasted pathetically in their gentle harmony with the man's heart-throbs of passion, the woman's heart-throbs of suffering. Eden before sin entered it, is the suggestion of Nature; and in so far as human nature fails to respond to it, it knows its own bitterness. There is a darkness about evil from which the pure soul shrinks affrighted. The mystery of Joyce's sin was more appalling to Gladys than her knowledge of it. Yet in love's stress woman's heart sees but one course,-fidelity. Whatever the cost to her, faith serves love, by divine instinct. This is the law of survival,of immortality.

Her long silence

"Is it forgiveness, Gladys ?" asked Joyce. had comforted him. A woman's surrender sends reluctance before it.

"In the spirit, yes. But-but-"

"Forgiveness of spirit that is not in the letter, Gladys, is a mocking pretence, a hypocrisy."

"Oh, is forgiveness love?" she appealed to him. "Would unforgiveness be self-love? Am I confused by the problem that baffles all women? Or are there men,-is there love,— without reproach ?"

"There are men. There is love," he admitted with infinite sadness. "But I and my love are not these, Gladys!"

Into the gloom she gazed, with eyes straining vainly for light. Then, of a sudden, with a soft sob like a child's whose

"Where perfect truth, perfect honesty, are, love must be worthy," she said, with conviction. "Joyce, it is not for me to forgive, but to forget!"

"Wait," she said, with a gentle pride that restrained him. "There are conditions for me, as well as for you. As a wife, I must be still Boyle Broderick's daughter! He left legacies which not only my wealth but my life must honor. I have a little red book which we must read together. Until then nothing is final."

"I endorse the little red book without reading it," he cried. "Oh, my darling, my darling, kiss me!"

him.

"No," she whispered, "not yet!" And her will controlled Her hands to his lips were enough.

"Well, my boy, 'to be, or not to be?'" persisted the Colonel, as he headed the mare towards the distant station. His voice was triumphant. Joyce's rapt face had betrayed him. "Is the Pioneer yours, or another's ? "

all.

"Mine, Colonel!" Joyce clasped his friend's hand, reins and "We'll talk it over to-morrow, but no details to-night. I'm way up in the stars. Let me stay there."

"With all my heart, boy!" At the risk of a runaway the Colonel returned the hand-pressure. "I've been there myself, in my time; I'm there again,-with a difference! Joyce, The ladies !-God bless 'em!'"

Once more,

"Amen!" Joyce saluted the stars, in his ecstasy. Life and love, for the first time, were perfect!

Previously, in spite of his "luck," in both there had been something always lacking; but to-night had left no flaw, no incompleteness, no desire. Love? Until now, he never had known love in truth and in spirit! Life? He had not yet lived it. College had been but its prelude. Raymond's West but a start; his Pioneer success a mere prophecy; the Shasta, fortune's first favor; his social popularity a sham victory; even his marriage, only an initiatory experience whetting his heart rather than appeasing it. But his soul and heart, intellect and sense, ambition and tenderness, all were finding in Gladys their perfect complement. She was his own, and his all. His life and love reached their height in her, the human height that

The cab that bore him to his hotel rolled and rattled along its way. The cars clanged by it, carts and carriages met and passed it, all unnoticed by its absorbed occupant. The dazzling electrics flashed before unseeing eyes; the noise of the street jarred on ears unhearing. He saw only the beauty, heard only the music, of the face and voice of the girl behind him: Gladys, his sweetheart! Gladys, his wife! Gladys, his wife! Even he, spoiled by conquests, knelt in awe of love's victory. He entered the hotel in a daze of happiness, and mounted to his suite in a dream.

In the palm-framed corridors the night-lamps burned ruddily. Only his footsteps relieved the midnight silence. The night-watchman, noiselessly pacing by, nodded with drowsy friendliness. "You'll find your rooms open, sir," he remarked, as he passed. Then he yawned, and turned the corner indifferently.

"Open ?" Why should his rooms be open? A glance towards his transom showed him that his suite was illuminated. His heart sank. To-night of all nights, what uninvited guest awaited him? He could offer no hospitality,-feign no wel

come!

No remembrance of a scene long-forgotten warned him; no thought of the night when his surprise to find his room-door ajar had culminated in the discovery of audacious Pearl Ripley; no presentiment that the seed sowed then, under exterior circumstances strangely similar to those of to-night, must be reaped now, in the hour when the harvest would be most bitter ! Pearl had forsaken him, rejected his suggestion of correspondence, voluntarily effaced herself from his life. Only remorseful retrospection kept alive even her memory. He flung open his door, and it swung to behind him, shutting and latching itself with a click. For an instant the lights dazzled him. Then a sound in a corner caused him to wheel about sharply. He stared mutely, incredulously. Had love and bliss maddened him? This woman-figure, tall and gaunt, age-stooped, familiar

der!

"Mother!" he heard himself cry, half in joy, all in won"Why, mother! Is it you? Why, mother!"

But the rigid posture, the sternly unsmiling, infinitely sad old face, perhaps more than all, the mysterious burden of her arms, repelled his affectionate impulse towards her. Falling