couch--and closed the door between us and all the world.

We were together--alone--at last!

I had dreamed of this hour. Here was its realization. I watched the
misery of remembrance dawn slowly on her white face. I pitied her as I
gazed at her, yet my whole being cried out in rage at its own pity. On
her trembling lips I seemed to see his kisses. In her frightened eyes
I saw his image. The shudder that shook her whole body as her eyes
held mine, confessed him--and that confession kept me at bay.

All that night I sat beside her.

What mad words I uttered a merciful nature never let me recall.

In the chill dawn I fled from her presence.

The width of the world had lain between us, me--and this woman whom I
had worshipped, of whom a consuming jealousy had made ten years of my
life a mad fever, which only her death had cured. Saner men have
protested against the same situation that ruined me--and yet, even in
my reasoning moments, like this, I knew that to have rebelled would
have been to have forced a tragic climax before the hour at which Fate
had fixed it.

* * * * *

When something--I know not what--recalled me again to the present, I
found that I had sat by her a day, as, on our last meeting, I watched
out the night. The sun, which had sent its almost level rays in at the