At half-past eight o'clock that evening David walked up the broad steps of the Chambers's house and rang the bell. The footman left him in the great hall, rich with carved oak and old tapestries, and went off with his card. As he waited, he continued to wonder at the telegram he had received half an hour before from Helen, which had merely said, "Can you not call this evening?" Why could she so suddenly desire to see him? He had no faintest guess.

In a few minutes the footman returned, led him up the stairway and directed him into the library. A wood fire was burning in the broad fire-place, and on a divan before it she was sitting, all in white.

She rose. "Will you draw the doors, please," her voice came to him.

He did so, and went toward her eagerly. But his steps slowed. Two or three paces from her he came to a stop. She stood, one hand on the divan's arm, gazing at him with parted lips, and wide, marvelling eyes. The look put a spell upon him; he returned it silently, with a growing bewilderment.

For several moments her whole being was brought to a focus in the awed wonder of her face. Then her breast began to rise and fall, her face to twitch, her eyes to flood with tears. The tears glinted down her cheeks and fell upon her swelling breast. She gave them no heed, but continued to hold her quivering face full upon him.

"What is it?" he whispered.

She stretched out her hands and slowly moved toward him, her eyes never leaving his face. He automatically took her hands. They were warm and tight, and through them he felt her whole body trembling. He thrilled under their pressure and under her look—under her glorious, brimming eyes.

As she gazed upon him his last five years ran through her mind—his trial, his prison life, his struggle for a foothold, his dishonoured name. A sob broke from her, and upon it came her low, vibrant voice—quavering, awed:

"It was God-like!"

He could barely ask, "What?"

"What you did."

He could not find a word, he was so bewildered, so thrilled by her gaze, by her clinging hands.

Her tears continued to drop from her eyes to her heart. There was a momentary silence, then the awed, quavering voice, said slowly:

"You never took the money!—the Mission money!"

For a space he was utterly dazed. The room swam; he held to her hands for support. Slowly the bewilderment of ignorance passed into the greater bewilderment of knowledge. She knew the truth! The secret of his life that he had hidden from her, thought always to hide from her, she had found out!

He realised this, but no more. It did not occur to him even to wonder how she had learned—and her words, "Miss Morgan told me," lodged an explanation in his mind that would waken after a while, but did not now stir a single thought regarding Kate. That she knew, had burst upon him so suddenly as to set everything whirling within him—to overwhelm, outcrowd all else. He sank to the couch, and she sank to a place beside him, their hands and eyes still clasped.

"Oh, you never took it!"

The voice dripped with tears, vibrated with a rising note of triumph.

"To think what you've gone through!" she marvelled on, quaveringly. "Your struggles—such struggles!—and everybody believing you dishonoured. And all the time, you being this splendid thing that you are!" A great sob surged up.

He was still whirling and still saw her face hazily. But his faculties were coming back. "What I did was not active—it was merely passive," he said.

"To achieve by suffering, and be repaid by dishonour—what can be higher?"

She gazed at him, and gazed at him. "And to think that I believed you—you!—guilty! To think that I never sent you even a single word while you were in prison! How I drew away from you when I found you sick in that poor room! How since then I have tried to help you reform! Ah, the irony of that now! And the irony of my proposing to you to pay back the money you never took!"

The words, the voice, had reached the ears of his heart; it was going madly. He gazed into her glorious face, quivering, tear-splashed, into her glorious, swimming eyes. Even in his daringest fancy he had never pictured his innocence affecting her so! He felt himself suddenly a wild, exultant flame. The insuperables were swept out of the world. He was the lover he had tried seven years to stifle.

He had thought the words would never be spoken. But they came out boldly—with a rush.

"I love you!"

She paled slightly. For a moment she looked wonderingly into his eyes. Her head slowly shook.

"Ah—how can you!" she whispered. "After I've had no faith!—after I've treated you so!"

She tried to draw away. But he caught her hands, held them tight.

"I love you!"

Again her head shook. "I'm ... not worthy."

"But you're glad—I did not take it?"

There was silence. Her eyes held steadfastly to his.

"It's another world!" she whispered.

Her glorious self looked at him, leaned toward him, from her divine eyes. His soul reeled; awe descended upon him. One hand loosed itself from hers, and weak, tingling, fearful, crept slowly about her, drew her toward him. She came at his touch. He bent down breathless. He felt her tremble in his arm. Her face was white, but it did not waver; her eyes glowed into his. As their lips touched, her free arm slipped about his neck and she shook with sobs.

"Yes ... another world!" she breathed.

When he had finished the long story of his acceptance of Morton's guilt and of what had followed, she sat gazing at him with her look of awe.

"I shall never stop being amazed that a man could do a thing like that," she said. "It was wonderful!"

He shook his head. "No," he said slowly, "the real wonder is that you could learn to love a man whom you believed to be a criminal." For a moment he looked silently into her eyes; this great thing that had come to pass still seemed hardly true. "That's the wonder—Helen."

It was the first time he had used her name, and he spoke it with a fervent hesitancy. He repeated it softly, "Helen!"

She flushed. "I loved you long before I thought you were guilty," she said. "It seems that I have always loved you."

"Always!" he repeated, amazed. "Always?—just as I've always loved you?"

"Yes."

For a space he was lost in his astonishment. "It doesn't seem possible. What was there in me to make you love me?"

"I loved you because of your idealism, because there was an indefinable something in you that was good and great. I loved you—Oh, I don't know why I loved you. I just loved you. And how I felt when I thought you had taken the money! Oh, David, it was——"

"Say it again!" he broke in.

"What?"

"David."

She smiled. "David."

Her face became serious. "It was weeks before I could sleep. I tried to forget you. As the years passed I sometimes thought I had; but when I tried to listen to other men talk of love, I knew I hadn't. I never forgot you. I was on trial with you. I was in prison with you. Though I kept away from you, I suffered with you when you were sick in that poor little room. I have searched for work with you. I have struggled with you to regain place in the world. Haven't you ever felt me beside you?"

"I have always thought of you as far away from me. Of you here"—his eyes swept the library—"in this life."

The glance about the room was an abrupt transition. For an hour or more he had been oblivious to all things save herself and himself. Now the library's material richness recalled to him the circumstances his rapture had for the time annihilated—her wealth, her social position, his poverty, his disgrace. Slowly these forced upon him one relentless fact. His face became grave, then pale.

"Why, what's the matter?" she cried.

"After all, we are as inexorably separated as ever," he said. "We can be merely friends."

"Why?"

"I'm poor—without position in life—covered with dishonour."

"It's your soul that I love," she said. "It's rich, and full of honour."

Her look, the ring in her voice, made him catch his breath.

"What!—you don't mean you'd marry me—as I am!"

"Yes."

Wild joy sprang up within him. But he choked it down.

"No—No! You couldn't. You haven't thought. You couldn't give up all the richness of your life, all your friends, for my poverty, my friendlessness. And this isn't all—nor the worst. There's my disgrace." He paused a moment before the great fact that must always be a barrier between them. "Do you realise, Helen," he went on, "that I can never clear myself. To do that would be to destroy the people of St. Christopher's. I can never do that. I never will."

She was thoughtful for several moments. "No, you never can," she said slowly. Then a glow came into her face, and she added suddenly in a tone that vibrated through him:

"But I shall marry you anyhow!"

He caught her hands. "God bless you!" he said huskily.

He shook his head slowly, with pale resolution. "But no. I love you too much, honour you too much, to drag you from your place—to let you marry a criminal!"