now the hardest test has still to come. For your wife's honor and
for the child, you must keep their names stainless, clear of all
reproach while you await God's judgment. They must leave you, Jesse."

"Oh, not that, sir!"

"Can they stay here in honor?"

"No."

"Can you run away?"

"Never!"

"Then you must part."

Jesse covered his face with his hands, and there against the deepening
twilight I saw shadows reaching out from him, as though--slowly the
shadows took form of high-shouldered wings and mighty pinions sweeping
to the ground.

He looked up, and behold he was changed.

"Pray for me, sir!" he whispered.

Then the priest raised his hand, and gave him the benediction.

* * * * *

_Jesse Closes the Book_

It is years now since my lady left me. Never has an ax touched her
trees, or any human creature entered her locked house. The rustle of her
dress is in the leaves each fall, the pines still echo to her voice. I
hear her footsteps over the new snow, I feel her presence when I read
her books. I know her thoughts are spirits haunting me, and all things
wait until she comes back. Not until I lost my lady did I ever hear that
faint, thin, swaying echo when her grove seemed to be humming tunes. At
times when dew was falling, I have heard the pattering of millions and
millions of little feet, just as she said, making the grass bend.

The papers often have pictures of my lady, the last as the Electra of
Euripides. I love her most of all in the Grecian robes, for once she
dreamed that she and I had been Greeks in some lost forgotten life.
Perhaps this is not our only life, or our last life, and we may be mated
in some place yet to come, where we shall not part.

Tears drop on the paper, and shame poor fool Jesse. The Book says that
He shall wipe away all tears. If my bear had only lived, I should not
have been so lonely. I wonder if--God help me, I can't write more. The
book is finished.

PART III

CHAPTER I

SPITE HOUSE

_Kate Reviews the Book_

The book is not finished. This book of Jesse's life and mine is not
finished while she who set us asunder is allowed to live. "Vengeance is
mine," saith the Lord, "I will repay." We wait.

What impulse moved my man after four years to enter that tragic house?
He read our book, so piteously stained, this heap of paper scrawled with
rusty ink. He added parts of a chapter, which I have finished. It is all
bl