, perhaps you sang so gayly from sheer joy in your own
goodness. It seems to me at times like that a man would----"

"A man would whistle a bit for courage," Tim interrupted. "Couldn't he
do that, Mark? Couldn't he go away with his head up and face set, or
must he totter along and wail simply because he is doing a fair thing
that any man would do?"

"Why, in Heaven's name, couldn't you keep her for yourself?" I cried,
pounding the floor with my crutch.

Then, in my anger I arose and went stamping up and down the room, while
Tim sat there staring at me blankly. At last I halted by the fireplace
and stood there looking down at him very hard. I looked right into his
heart and read it. He winced and turned his face from me. I was the
righteous judge now and he the culprit.

"You left her, Tim," I said hotly. "You might have known the girl
could never marry me after that minute. You might have known she was
not the girl to deceive me--she would have told me; and then, Tim, do
you think that I would have kept her to her promise? Why didn't you
come to me and tell me?"

"For your sake, Mark, I didn't," Tim answered, looking up.

"And for my sake you left the girl there--you turned your back on her
and went away. Then in her perplexity she looked to me again, and I
had gone. I didn't know. I went away for her sake, and when she sent
for me I had forsaken her, too. That's a shabby way to treat a woman.
Do you wonder she turned to Weston?"

"No," Tim said, "for Weston is a man of men, he is--and he cared for
her--that's why he stayed in the valley."

"I knew that," said I, "for I saw it that day when he went away from me
to the charcoal clearing."

"Then think of the lonely girl up there on the hill, Mark," Tim said.
He joined me at the fireplace, and we stood side by side, as often we
had stood in the old days, warming our hands, and watching the
crackling flames. "Do you blame her? I had gone, vowing never to come
back again till she kept her promise to you; you had fled from her--she
wrote, and no word came. And Weston is a wise man and a kind man, and
when she turned to him she found comfort. Do you blame her?"

"No," I said, half hesitating.

"After all, it's better, too," Tim went on. "What could you have given
her, Mark--or I, compared to what his wealth means to a woman like
Mary?"

Wealth was not happiness. Money was not peace. Etches were a
delusion. Now she had them. That was what