Augusta J. Evans

A promise having been exacted that the "triad" should accompany her to the early railway train, Devota went swiftly down a rear staircase to the side corridor running in front of the library. The door was open, and from the threshold she looked in. The room was well lighted; the typewriting machine at rest, the desk covered with official documents, and from a file at one side a sheaf of telegrams rustled as the air surged through the window. The sole occupant of the apartment was the secretary, Mr. Walton, seated before a tray-laden table. He had dined, and was dallying with a gilded liqueur glass in which iced Chartreuse sparkled like splintered emeralds.

Doubtless Governor Armitage was the centre of attraction in the drawing-room, and the auspicious moment had passed beyond recall. A premonition of defeat impaired her self-control, and shrinking from observation, Devota walked down the corridor to an arched door, whence a flight of steps led to the flower garden.

Avoiding the stone terrace in front, where an electric globe shone, she turned into a winding path bordered on both sides with wheeled boxes filled with tall pink oleanders in profuse bloom. A mid-summer full moon lighted every corner of the sloping lawn, bringing into velvety relief the shadow vignettes traced by leaf and vine across the smoothly clipped grass, and adding a silvery lustre to beds of lilies that lifted their white lips to drink from HersÉ's cool, dripping palms.

Among Mr. Churchill's valued curios he numbered a quaint sun dial of black lava, fashioned ages ago in an Ægean isle riven by volcanic throes.

The gnomon had been destroyed, and erosion by time and storm partly erased the Greek characters on the base, but doubtless some pagan Le NÔtre once deemed it an ornamental altar to the great sun god. A prosaic new gardener at "The Oleanders" found it more useful as a mere pedestal, whereon he had placed a terra cotta vase filled with luxuriant nasturtiums that wove over the whole a fringe of scarlet and orange.

Devota stood beside the dial, and silently wrestled with emotions habitually held in bondage by an iron will. The night had grown very still; only a faint breath of air now and then pilfered and strewed the attar of oleanders and lilies, and from rock-ribbed shore rose the solemn, monotonous ocean hymn, the immemorial recessional chanted by shattered waves.

An overwhelming sorrow seized and shook the lonely woman standing by the dial. She threw up her arms, as if in mute appeal to some tragic fate, and her fingers gripped and wrung each other; then the clenched hands fell upon the crown and garlands of nasturtiums, and she closed her eyes to shut out torturing retrospective visions.

An overwhelming sorrow seized and shook the lonely woman by the dial

The pungent smoke of a cigar suddenly arrested her attention, and over the sward slowly walked the Governor. As he passed a drooping deodar he disappeared, but a moment later a great cluster of rose oleander smote his bared black head, and he stood inhaling its fragrance. His upturned face showed unusual pallor, and an expression of profound sadness that failed to soften its dominant sombre sternness. An audible sigh escaped him, and throwing away his cigar he moved forward toward the terrace.

The sight of the graceful figure immediately in front of him was evidently an unpleasant surprise, and for an instant he wavered, tempted to turn aside, then advanced. When quite near he bowed, and without pausing, would have passed her, but she stepped at once to meet him.

Her voice was steady, though strained, and her words crisp and measured:

"If Governor Armitage can grant me a few moments in which to lay before him a matter of importance to others, I shall be glad for reasons that he will readily understand are not personal."

"If it is Miss Lindsay's wish, my time and services are certainly at her command."

The moon shone full on both faces, and each had suddenly contracted and hardened. The Governor threw back his head and folded his arms behind him; Devota's right hand clutched the edge of the dial, and with her left she drew from beneath the violets in her girdle a slip of telegram paper.

"Having twice refused to become a member of Mrs. Churchill's house-party for this week, I was much annoyed, perplexed and pained when most unexpectedly I found myself reluctantly obliged to come here for a few hours. In the midst of preparations for my long absence, I was summoned to a grief-stricken family whose pitiable condition of abject misery and terror no verbal picture can exaggerate. My old friend, Mrs. Ronald Clinton, is prostrated by sickness and sorrow, and unable to leave the room where her baby girl is critically ill, probably dying; while in the same house the aged mother-in-law raving with brain fever calls for the son who is sentenced to be hung next week. Neither his wife nor his mother can visit the distant prison to say good-bye to the doomed man; In her despair, Amy Clinton, having exhausted all other means of saving her husband, has seized the fatuous belief that my prayer might possibly have some effect. It was in vain that I refused to come, assuring her that I was the very last person to send as envoy to your Excellency, who had declined her own appeal when she knelt at your feet. She persisted in her frantic pleadings because of an inexplicable telegram from Ronald Clinton, telling her the prison chaplain was sure I could secure help for him. On what grounds he based this preposterous advice Amy was absolutely ignorant, as neither of us can learn even the name of the chaplain. Knowing the futility of my mission, I yielded at last to her frenzied prayers—I drank the cup of bitter humiliation—and as my last sacrifice on the altar of friendship for a broken-hearted wife and mother, I surrendered my self-respect, my womanly pride. Read this message to the wife, and then I feel assured you will realize what a terrible ordeal has finally forced me into your presence."

She held the telegram toward him, and taking the paper he read it carefully more than once. Refolding it, he bowed and returned it, but the locked lips yielded no comment. She tore the slip into shreds, and her hands trembled as she asked:

"Can your Excellency imagine why this mournful and mortifying task was laid on my unwilling shoulders, by the chaplain who is an utter stranger?"

He looked intently into her beautiful eyes, and his voice lowered to a key of icy sternness.

"If Miss Lindsay desires the name of the chaplain, I can gratify her wish. Peyton Knox has recently officiated in the prison chapel."

A hot wave crimsoned her cheeks, and she shrank as if from a blow, but as the color ebbed, she drew herself proudly to her full height.

"As any other total stranger claiming every citizen's right of petition, I reluctantly intrude upon your leisure, and I appeal to you as a man, as a gentleman, as the highest official of my State, to grant some mercy to a doomed criminal. For humanity's sake—oh, Governor Armitage, for the sake of a ruined and helpless family, I ask—I beg—that you will pardon Ronald Clinton and save two women from insanity! Be merciful; oh, be merciful, as every Governor can be if he so wills."

He watched her steadily, and once he drew a long, deep breath as if sorely oppressed; but her anxiously searching gaze discovered no relaxation. She suddenly leaned forward, and her exquisitely curved lips quivered:

"You will not deny my prayer! You will pardon Ronald?"

Slowly he shook his head.

"Miss Lindsay, I shall never pardon him. At all costs I must be absolutely just."

"You will not spare his life? when your office empowers you to set him free? You cruelly elect to order his wife widowed, and his babes disgraced!"

"Should I forget the widow and fatherless little ones of Norman Hewitt whom Ronald Clinton deliberately and brutally murdered? The wrongs of the dead are too often buried with him, and sickly sympathy—posing as philanthropic Christian clemency—is lavished on branded Cains set free to defy human and divine law, and repeat crimes that should have forfeited their blackened lives."

"Your Excellency's standard of justice is more righteous than that of Abel's God, Who instead of slaying his murderer granted him long life in which to purify his guilty soul and mend his ways!"

"Disclaiming any approach to irreverence, permit me to remind you that the experiment of pardon was not repeated; and the severest penal code ever compiled came directly from the Divine lawgiver, whose chosen people demanded 'a life for a life.'"

"Hanging poor Amy's husband could not compensate Mrs. Hewitt for the loss of hers. The exaction of blood tax is a legal survival of savagery. Justice is not the sole divine attribute—mercy is coordinate. Try to remember that Talmudic prayer of Jehovah: 'Be it my will that my mercy overpower my justice!' As Governor, the issue of life or death lies in the hollow of your hand, and for the last time I beg of you not to listen to the barbarous prompting of a cruel revenge. Think of the awful responsibility of hurling an unprepared soul into eternity. Think of the blessed relief that only you can give to tortured, despairing human hearts who can look to no one but you for succor."

"I have never pardoned a convicted criminal, and I never will. I cannot conscientiously exercise the 'gubernatorial prerogative' of riding roughshod over the mature, deliberate verdict of twelve sane, dispassionate men empowered to sift all testimony, and carefully guard for their guidance only indubitable evidence. The sanctity of jury verdicts has been so frequently violated by reckless use of pardoning power, that the value of blood-bought jury trial has dwindled into a mere mockery, an arena for spectacular professional jugglers. Ample legal machinery has long been provided for the rehearing and unbiased review of all criminal cases, whenever new witnesses or new and vital facts cast any doubt on the wisdom or justice of judge and jury. Courts of appeal and review should have power to correct wrongs that juries sometimes inflict upon the innocent, but the preposterous assumption of infallible prescience and 'altruistic clemency' by a President or a Governor is an ideal aspiration that I do not permit myself to indulge. This popular form of annulling jury verdicts is a fatal blow at the very foundation of penal jurisprudence; and the exasperating quibbles of subtle attorneys—the systematically delayed execution of verdicts and the too frequent veto of death sentences—all contribute to the deplorable increase of lynching. Pardon my taxing your patience for this enumeration of my reasons for preferring to leave justice to competent and unprejudiced courts."

She threw out one hand with a repellent gesture.

"Capital punishment is merely revengeful, judicial murder, utterly futile as a corrective method. Taking a second human life avails nothing as requital for the destruction of the first victim. It is indefensible cruelty in an age pluming itself on higher humanitarian standards."

"Miss Lindsay, legal punitive statutes are not designed as retaliatory sacrifices to revenge, but as deterrents to crime, simply because dread of speedy retribution is the most powerful motive that can restrain the criminal masses. Maudlin sentimentality that just now inveighs against execution of judicial penal decrees, is a danger signal that points to public degeneracy in a people who regard mawkish sympathy with culprits as an advanced phase of civilization; and to whom the condonation of crime is more humanitarian than its extirpation."

His slowly uttered words rang with the measured precision of a sculptor's chisel upon stone, and the inquisitorial eyes, no longer sombre, now glowed as they looked steadily into hers. For an instant a spasm of keen pain shivered the composure of her haughty face, and her voice rose into a bitter, half-strangled cry:

"No mercy from you! I might as well pray to that growling sea yonder, watching hungrily for the next drowning wretch. I knew mine was a fool's errand, yet pity conquered repugnance, and it seemed so incredible, so monstrous that any man could coolly point to the gallows as sole answer to the heart-rending petition of an almost frantic family."

He pressed a hand over his brow, pushed back the thick, close-cut black hair, and after a moment he answered in an altered tone of profound and tender regret:

"My fellow monster, the sea, is spared after-pangs that are my portion. Do you imagine that any argument could avail to change my convictions of official duty, when in a fiery ordeal I felt compelled to deny the wailing wife who brought her pretty little ones to cry in their father's behalf? Try to realize what must have been the feelings of a man not wholly petrified, when he lifted from his office floor the kneeling form of an aged, white-haired woman who could only gasp between sobs: 'As you hope for mercy when your naked soul fronts God on His judgment seat, spare my son's life! Remember the mother who cradled you in her arms—for her sake, for God's sake, be merciful to me—save my boy from the gallows.' Miss Lindsay, the terrible curse is that the wages of sin are paid too often to the helpless innocent. I could not pardon Ronald Clinton, whose crime was deliberately planned murder, but learning of illness in his family, I sent a telegram at four o'clock to-day staying the execution of his sentence until restoration to health permits his mother and wife to spend a day with him in prison. Sometimes when I long for rest, the vision of those heart-broken women and two lovely children clinging to my knees, robs me of sleep."

"You spared him only long enough to say good-bye to those who, if possible, would die to save him! Is that deemed a mercy—or refinement of cruelty? Your telegram was sent at four o'clock? If news of the reprieve had only arrived before I left my house, this needless journey would have been averted; I should have been spared this keen humiliation on the eve of quitting a country I shall probably see no more."

From a silvered sea rose the metrical rippling of waves crooning a "berceuse" to drowsy lands cradled by foam-laced surf. For a moment silence had followed the woman's words, and in that brief pause Governor Armitage's luminous, watchful eyes noted a swift and subtle change. The face whitened, hardened to its usual rigid coldness; all trace of emotion vanished as utterly as the light from an extinguished lamp in some lovely transparent globe, and the strained expression of her unflinching eyes gave place to one of baffling, inflexible quietude; the habitual mask temporarily loosened, was readjusted.

When she spoke her clear, even tone showed no hint of cadence that had sunk it to passionate protest.

"In ending an interview intolerably repugnant to my womanly instincts, permit me to say that, although conspicuously futile as regards the sole object of this visit to Mrs. Churchill, I shall avail myself of the unexpected opportunity to offer you an apology for the grievous wrong of which I was once guilty. Simple justice demands this admission, and in addition I frankly express my pleasure in finding that my judgment was wholly erroneous. I tender sincere congratulations that your vindication was so triumphant; and I bid your Excellency good-night."

As she turned away he threw out a detaining hand.

"Understanding fully what such gracious words cost you, I value them correspondingly, and hope my thanks will be as acceptable as your apology. Will you pardon me if I venture to ask, if you had known that Peyton Knox was the chaplain who dictated the prison telegram, would your sympathy for poor Clinton's family have sufficed to bring you into my presence?"

"Certainly not."

"You had regained sufficient faith in my integrity to believe that in matters involving conscientious scruples, I should prove callous even to Miss Lindsay's appeals?"

The starry glint in his eyes brightened, and a bitter smile curled his lips. She met his gaze with cool, proud calmness.

"The number of mangled offerings Governor Armitage has long laid before the pet fetich he labels 'Duty,' allows no margin for any one to doubt that the sacrificial axe needs no whetting for the next victim on the official scaffold. That I was predestined to defeat I knew as well before I came as now, but the sanctity of one's motive can sometimes nerve one to drain even a loathsome draught."

Only a few feet of sward separated them, and while she stood apparently as devoid of emotion as the sun dial, he knew from the quivering of the diamonds in the cross, and the fiery flashes of the opals rising and falling at her throat that her heart throbbed fiercely.

"Have you chanced to remember the day of the month, and that it is also the thirteenth annual anniversary?"

"Yes, the thirteenth. Barring all superstition, which of course you scout, how could this disagreeable meeting have failed to be unlucky? It is true I have passed my springtime, but decrepitude has not yet attacked my memory, and it warns me now that I have unduly trespassed on your Excellency's time."

She bowed, stooped to gather up the train of heliotrope chiffon, and moved in the direction of the house, but he stepped before her.

"One moment, Miss Lindsay. May I ask why you refused to marry Hoyte Kingdon?"

"Refused to marry him? Can you think it possible any sane woman could be so hopelessly fatuous as to decline an offer of his hand, of his exalted position? How incredible the suggestion that an opportunity of marriage so brilliant would not have been seized with avidity, by even the most ambitious of husband hunters!"

"Hoyte told me of his persistent but unsuccessful effort to win your affection."

A defiant gleam leaped into her eyes as she stood at bay, and in the brilliant moonlight the coil of opals around her lovely neck seemed a writhing serpent of flame.

"Though women are satirized as unworthy custodians of their suitor's confidential proposals, it appears that manly friends have no compunction in violating the seal of secrecy. Why did I fail to marry Hoyte Kingdon? Since your Excellency indulges such sympathetic solicitude in his behalf, it will comfort you to know that I sometimes share your wonder at my lack of wisdom in ignoring a prize coveted by many others. I respected Hoyte, admired his handsome personality, his very brilliant talent, his diplomatic career; and certainly the position he occupied as ambassador at Court was alluring to my ambition and tempting in various aspects. I liked him immensely, and I wished very much to love him, but despite my heroic efforts I could not find him essential to my happiness. Is it not unfortunate that one cannot successfully whistle love to come, as one signals to a terrier or a roaming canary? Since the days of poor Psyche elusive love plays hide-and-seek in devious and baffling ways. Hoyte now has a beautiful and charming wife who makes him supremely happy and graces the conspicuous diplomatic circle in which he has attained the highest honors. We expect to spend Christmas with Hoyte and his wife after our return from Bangkok. I am sure his guardian angel was alert when he barred my heart against Ambassador Kingdon's magnetism."

Leaning forward, the Governor's eyes seemed to search her soul, and his voice thrilled like a viol's chord.

"Did no tender, regretful memory hold fast the lock that refused to yield?"

For an instant she put her hand upon the jewelled collar to loosen some stricture that caught her throat, but her tone was firm, her eyes fixed on his.

"Governor Armitage ought to know that women are not retrospective, that like other butterflies the present suffices and we flee from 'regret' as the real vampire that robs us of bloom and is so detrimental to curves of beauty. We shrink from dead years—spectre-peopled—as one shuns midnight prowls in a cemetery where graves may suddenly yawn over fleshless horrors."

"Across the chasm of thirteen years you still prefer to make no signal of reconciliation?"

"Scourged by a sense of justice quite as keen as your own, I have apologized for a great wrong you once suffered at my hands. I owed you that acknowledgment, and now the debt is cancelled fully, and the ghost of that one regret is eternally at rest since I have the gratifying assurance that the harsh misjudgment of an impulsive girl had no power to spoil your life, or retard your eminently successful career."

"Failure in love affairs can 'spoil' no lives of those who maintain consciousness of moral rectitude, and a justifiable self-respect; but occasionally such keen disappointments prove beneficent tonics in teaching a wise discrimination between sham and reality, shadow and substance. Sooner or later men and probably women learn that the only human tie that even death cannot dissolve, the one reliable chain that no treacherous weak link can impair—is that binding the mother's heart to her child. In desperately bitter trials mother-love is the strengthening angel that sustains, and when the world turned its back upon me, my blessed mother was my sole solace and defender."

"Because knowing something of the truth she could not doubt. To her at least you had given facts withheld even from——"

"Pardon me. She was as absolutely ignorant as you, as all others who accused me. When that whirlwind of slander overwhelmed me I told her only what I made known to the woman who was my betrothed. When with tears streaming over her face she took me in her arms and asked: 'My boy, are you guilty?' I could say only that I was entirely innocent, but bound by a solemn oath never to betray facts committed to me under seal of professional confidence; facts that involved two broken-hearted women and a noble old man, my friend in fatherless, needy boyhood whom I had sworn to shield from disgrace and ruin. My mother lifted my face, looked steadily into my eyes and raised one hand: 'My son, you swear to me on your honor as a gentleman, on the honor of my boy Royal, that this is true—that you would be a traitor to divulge the facts proving your innocence?' She kissed me when that oath passed my lips, and from that hour she abstained from all questioning; she clung tenderly to me, believing in my innocence as she believed in the existence of her God. You had the same assurance, all that I could honorably give. Mother-love held through all assaults, no link gave way;—but yours? The chain snapped at the first taut strain—crumbled like sand."

She had grown very white, and unconsciously her fingers lifted the quivering fiery stones that bound her throbbing throat.

"Let the ashes of long dead injuries rest over all that once disquieted you. If you had only trusted me I should have held the secret inviolate even to the gates of death."

"The shameful secret was not mine to divulge. 'Trusted you?' I trusted you to trust the honor of the man you had promised to make your husband. When on my knees I swore to you that my innocence, temporarily discredited, must inevitably be established some day by those for whose sins I was branded, do you recollect quite all you gave me in return? That thirteenth of July you hurled my ring at my feet, denounced me as a despicable hypocrite—as a leper unfit to defile your presence; you denied me even the right of acquaintanceship, vehemently forbade the privilege of recognizing you by word or sign. Even then I partly forgave your frantic, passionately bitter accusation, because I realized how revolting to your pure, womanly instincts was the grievous slander. You cast me out of your life as a disgraced villain who had forfeited all right to associate with gentlemen. No alternative was mine; I submitted to your cruel edict. Very soon the pall that seemed to blot out all hope for me, was suddenly and strangely lifted by that tragic deathbed revelation which cleared me of all blame, and left no shadow to sully my name. I stepped back to the plane of honorable manhood. Since the day of that complete vindication, twelve long years have passed. I waited, not patiently, but I waited watching for some message, some signal from the woman who had promised to become my wife, and who owed me a renewal of confidence. Knowing me innocent you have elected to keep me under ban."

The concentrated bitterness of his deliberately uttered indictment, and the merciless searchlight in his eyes had no power to shiver the pallid rigidity of the face proudly uplifted.

"Having forfeited all claim to your kind or friendly remembrance, how could you, who know my nature, expect me to invite intolerable humiliation from your rejection of any overture I offered that involved confession of wrong? I had no right to assume that a message from me would be acceptable, and as far as I knew, your life was so serene and satisfying that any echo thirteen years old would prove only an intrusive discord. Our alienation was complete and you carefully shunned any opportunity to end it."

"Had you allowed me the liberty of approach? I obeyed your command, I followed the line you dictated, I rigidly refrained from word or letter and I accorded you the silence you demanded. My mother urged me to venture some overture for reconciliation, and just before her death I found a letter she had addressed to you in my behalf. Self-respect forced me to expostulate, and at her bedside I burned that letter. At least I am entitled to your thanks that in no degree have I attempted to invade the territory, from which I was so ignominiously ejected."

"In saying good-night, and also an eternal good-bye, I beg your Excellency's acceptance of my thorough appreciation of, and thanks for your courteous and consistent compliance with my wishes."

She turned away quickly, but his hand fell upon her shoulder.

"Devota! Devota!"

"Governor Armitage exceeds even his official rights, and usurps a privilege I grant no man. Do not touch me.

He shook her gently as one might a wayward child, and her haughty repose could no longer defy the tender, glowing eyes so close to her own.

"How much longer do you intend to impale us both on the iron cross of your cruel, despotic pride? Since the responsibility for our meeting here is yours, not mine, I will speak at last, and you shall listen. For a time, after you forsook me, I bore up bravely, sustained by the belief that my banishment was temporary, because I felt assured that vindication, though tardy, was inevitable. Sooner than I dared to hope that woful tragedy removed all suspicion from me, lifted me back at once to the position of which my slanderers had robbed me, and I exulted in the anticipation of our speedy reunion; watched the hour of every mail delivery. After you went abroad the second time I realized that my doom was permanent, that your proud obstinacy would prevent you from ever lifting a finger to recall me, and then I grew desperately bitter. About six years ago I was tempted to find some relief by a change of conditions that were reducing me to callous cynicism. I set to work diligently to cultivate an affection for a very lovely woman I thought it possible I might win by persistent devotion. I longed to forget, to supplant you, to cast you out of my life as completely as you had exiled me; but despite all efforts when I tried to picture her as mistress of my home, as sharing my name, my heart revolted. Your haunting face rose before me, your dear, beautiful hands seemed to steal into mine as in the days when they belonged to me. I abandoned such futile struggles and accepted the lonely lot that could not be averted. So long as you remained Miss Lindsay I had the right to recall all that was so precious thirteen years ago. Then came the supreme trial; it was the general opinion of your social world that Kingdon had won his suit, and that the day of his marriage was not distant. I knew he was worthy, was the most admired and envied man in our State, and it seemed incredible you should not accept the glittering future he offered. You cannot realize the maddening torture that seizes a man, when he thinks that the one woman in all the world who holds his heart in the hollow of her hand will be clasped in the arms of another entitled to call her his wife! So keen was my suffering that I think the damned would not have changed places with me. Then Kingdon suddenly altered the date of sailing, and in bidding me good-bye told me you had twice rejected him. Business had called me to your city, and after his farewell visit that night I could not bear the noise and bustle of the hotel. I walked about the parks and up and down the streets, and though the sleet was falling I wandered to the avenue where your great stone house towers above all others. Standing on the pavement in front I listened to the city clock clanging two A.M. A light shone from an upper window; elsewhere all was dark. Only granite walls shut me from sight of one whose precious lips had felt the touch of mine. As I stood in the pelting sleet, over the silence of the night I heard a sound that seemed to come from the opening heavens. An organ roll thrilling that 'Adagio' no fingers but yours had ever adequately interpreted to me. Our Adagio—yours and mine—sanctified by blessed associations with the hallowed days of our betrothal. As I listened, the dreary lost years rolled away as a black curtain, and in the limelight of memory I saw again all our surroundings on that last happy evening when you played for me; the misty purple of mountain heights, the ferny gorges where scarlet rhododendrons flared their torches, the clustering honeysuckle whose chalices swung in the breeze, and you—my promised bride—seated at the piano, the sunset glow burnishing your hair, your white dress and floating blue ribbons. I knew your touch; the passionately tender, closing chords drifted like a whisper from our past, like an answer from your soul to the call of mine, and it told me why Kingdon could never claim you. Ah! tears gathered, dripped; happy tears. I knew then you could not forget, and since that night I have found grim comfort in the belief that only your inexorable, merciless pride stood between us. Sweetheart of my young manhood, darling of my lonely, weary old heart, will you crucify us both until death ends all?"

She had withdrawn from his detaining hand, shrinking back to the support of the dial, but the surging torrent of his words stirred frozen depths never before beyond control. Tears glittered in her eyes, and her lips fluttered like wind-swept rose leaves.

"You believe my pride separates us now? No, no; not pride. Can't you understand that my bitter humiliation is the barrier that shuts me out? The lofty distinction you have attained is the dividing wall I could never scale. In the dark days of calumny I forsook you; when most you needed loyalty I refused to share your disgrace. Now, as the popular idol, at whose feet the noblest public tributes are laid, you must accept my confession that I am not worthy to share your honors. I was weighed in the balance and found wofully wanting. The verdict of the scales thirteen years ago cannot be reversed by an eternity of regrets."

"Hush, hush! we bury the past. Twice at the polls the people gave me their confidence, and gratefully I hold the solemn responsibility as a precious trust to be sacredly guarded, but public applause is starving diet to a hungry heart. My darling, between you and me remains no question of confession or absolution, and to-night blots out those terribly bitter years. It is my right to readjust the balance; in one scale I lay all civic honors, the other holds my life-long Sweetheart outweighing every other earthly treasure. I ask at your hands the one blessing lacking in my career. Give me, oh, give me at last the only real crown that can glorify a man's life—the tender love of a faithful, pure wife! I will no longer be denied."

He stepped closer, took her cold, quivering hands in his warm palms, and she hid her face against his arm.

"You have suffered from my frantic accusations on that dreadful July day, but you will never understand the intolerable bitterness of my punishment, scourged all these dreary, mournful years by keen, torturing self-reproach. Roy—my own Roy—I am not worthy, but the world is empty and desolate for me without the one love of my life."