wyer who had drawn the truth out of the breast of many
a criminal by no other command than their manly light. Rowan sat
before him without an effort at composure. There was something
about him that suggested a young officer out of uniform, come home
with a browned face to try to get himself court-martialled. He
spoke first:

"I have had Isabel's letter, and I have come to tell you."

"I need not say to you, tell me the whole truth."

"No, you need not say that to me. I should have told you long ago,
if it had been a duty. But it was not a duty. You had not the
right to know; there was no reason why you should know. This was a
matter which concerned only the woman whom I was to marry." His
manner had the firm and quiet courtesy that was his birthright.

A little after dark, Rowan emerged into the street. His carriage
was waiting for him and he entered it and went home. Some minutes
later, Judge Morris came down and walked to the Hardages'. He rang
and asked for Professor Hardage and waited for him on the
door-step. When Professor Hardage appeared, he said to him very
solemnly: "Get your hat."

The two men walked away, the Judge directing their course toward
the edge of the town. "Let us get to a quiet place," he said,
"where we can talk without being overheard." It was a pleasant
summer night and the moon was shining, and they stepped off the
sidewalk and took the middle of the pike. The Judge spoke at last,
looking straight ahead.

"He had a child, and when he asked Isabel to marry him he told her."

They walked on for a while without anything further being said.
When Professor Hardage spoke, his tone was reflective:

"It was this that made it impossible for her to marry him. Her
love for him was everything to her; he destroyed himself for her
when he destroyed himself as an ideal. Did he tell you the story?"

"Told everything."

By and by the Judge resumed: "It was a student's love affair, and
he would have married her. She said that if she married him, there
would never be any happiness for her in life; she was not in his
social class, and, moreover, their marriage would never be
understood as anything but a refuge from their shame, and neither
of them would be able to deny this. She disappeared sometime after
the birth of the child. More than a year later, maybe it was two
years, he received a letter from her stating that she was married
to a man in her own class and that her husband