nce overpowered him. Realizing the full meaning of all that had
gone into his past experience, he found himself thinking of Lynda as she
had looked a few hours before. He resented the lesser hold the past
still had upon him--he wanted to shake it free. Not bitterly--not with
contempt--but, he argued, why should his life be shadowed always by a
mistake, cruel and unpardonable as it was, when she, that little
ignorant partner in the wrong, had gone her way and had doubtless by now
put him forever from her mind?

How small a part it had played with her, poor child. She had been
betrayed by her strange imagination and suddenly awakened passion; she
had followed blindly where he had led, but when catastrophe had
threatened one who had been part of her former life--familiar with all
that was real to her--how readily the untamed instinct had reverted to
its own!

And he--Truedale comforted himself--he had come back to _his_ own, and
his own had made its claim upon him. Why should he not have his second
chance? He wanted love--not friendship; he wanted--Lynda! All else faded
and Lynda, the new Lynda--Lynda with the hair that had learned to curl,
the girl with the pretty white shoulders and sweet, kind eyes--stood
pleadingly close in the shabby old room and demanded recognition. "She
thinks," and here Truedale covered his eyes, "that I am--as I was when I
began my life--here! What would she say--if she knew? She, God bless
her, is not like others. Faithful, pure, she could not forgive the
_truth_!"

Truedale, thinking so of Lynda Kendall, owned to his best self that
because the woman who now filled his life held to her high ideals--would
never lower them--he could honour and reverence her. If she, like him,
could change, and accept selfishly that which she would scorn in
another, she would not be the splendid creature she was. And
yet--without conceit or vanity--Truedale believed that Lynda felt for
him what he felt for her.

Never doubting that he could bring to her an unsullied past, she was,
delicately, in finest woman-fashion, laying her heart open to him. She
knew that he had little to offer and yet--and yet--she was--willing!
Truedale knew this to be true. And then he decided he must, even at this
late day, tell Lynda of the past. For her sake he dare not venture any
further concealment. Once she understood--once she recovered from her
surprise and shock--she would be his friend, he felt confident of that;
but she wou