have to
be--forced here!" And at that moment Lynda had no thought of the money.
Bigger, deeper things held her.

"And--our wedding day, Lyn? Surely it may be soon."

"Let me see. Of course I'm a woman, Con, and therefore I must think of
clothes. And I would like--oh! very much--to be married in a certain
little church across the river. I found it once on a tramp. There are
vines running wild over it--pink roses. And roses come in early June,
Con."

"But, dearest, this is only--March."

"I must have--the roses, Con."

And so it was decided.

Late that night, in the stillness of the five little rooms of the big
apartment, Truedale thought of his past and his future.

How splendid Lynda had been. Not a word of all that he had told her, and
yet full well he realized how she had battled with it! She had accepted
it and him! And for such love and faith his life would be only too
short to prove his learning of his hard lesson. The man he now was
sternly confronted the man he had once been, and then Truedale renounced
the former forever--renounced him with pity, not with scorn. His only
chance of being worthy of the love that had come into his life now, was
to look upon the past as a stepping stone. Unless it could be that, it
would be a bottomless pit.

CHAPTER XVI

The roses came early that June. Truedale and Lynda went often on their
walks to the little church nestling deep among the trees in the Jersey
town. They got acquainted with the old minister and finally they set
their wedding day. They, with Brace, went over early on the morning.
Lynda was in her travelling gown for, after a luncheon, she and Truedale
were going to the New Hampshire mountains. It was such a day as revived
the reputation of June, and somehow the minister, steeped in the
conventions of his office, could not let things rest entirely in the
hands of the very eccentric young people who had won his consent to
marry them. An organist, practising, stayed on, and always Lynda was to
recall, when she thought of her wedding day, those tender notes that
rose and fell like a stream upon which the sacred words of the simple
service floated.

"The Voice That Breathed O'er Eden" was what the unseen musician played.
He seemed detached, impersonal, and only the repeated strains gave
evidence of his sympathy. An old woman had wandered into the church and
sat near the door with a rapt, wistful look on her wrinkled face. Near
the altar was a little