n his honor as a gentleman."

"Words, vapid words! Empty, worthless as last year's nests. My lover,"
she laughed scornfully, "is quite safe even from your malevolence. If
indeed 'one touch of nature makes the whole world kin,' one might
expect some pity from the guild of love swains; and it augurs sadly for
Miss Gordon's future, that the spell is so utterly broken."

His dark face reddened, lowered.

"If you please, we will keep Miss Gordon's name out of the
conversation, and hereafter when--"

"Enough! I shall keep her image in my grateful heart, the few tedious
months I have to live; and there seems indeed a sort of poetic justice
in the fact that the bride you covet, has become the truest, tenderest
friend of the hapless girl whom you are prosecuting for murder."

"Beryl--"

"I forbid such insolent presumption! You shall not utter the name my
father gave me. It is holy as my baptism; it must be kept unsullied for
my lover's lips to fondle. This is your last visit here, for if you
dare to intrude again, I will demand protection from the warden. I will
bear no more."

As he looked at her, the witchery of her youthful loveliness,
heightened by the angry sparkle in her deep eyes, by the vivid
carnation of her curling lips, mastered him; and when he thought of the
brown-haired woman to whom he was pledged, he set his teeth tight, to
smother an execration. He moved toward the door, paused, and came back.

"Will it comfort you to know that I suffer even more than you do; that
I am plunged into a fiercer purgatory than that to which I have
condemned you? I am devoured by regret; but I will atone. I came here
as your friend; I can never be less, and in defiance of your hatred, I
shall prove my sincerity. Because I bemoan my rash haste, will you say
good-bye kindly? Some day, perhaps, you will understand."

He held out his hand, and his blue eyes lost their steely glitter,
filled with a prayer for pardon.

She picked up the bouquet which had fallen from the window sill to the
floor, and without hesitation put it into his fingers:

"I think I understand all that words could ever explain. My short
stream of life is very near the great ocean of rest. I have ceased to
struggle, ceased to hope; and since the end is so close, I wish no
active warfare even with those who wronged me most foully. If you will
spare me the sight of you, I will try to forget the added misery of the
visits you have forced upon me, and perhaps