played a finer part than he. Worst of all,
his deed could not be excused on the grounds of necessity. He could
have lived on ten thousand a year; he could have done without the
million and more which was now his. He could have done without the
society, the pleasures of which had always been a lure. He could have,
but he had not, and he had complicated it all with the thought of
another woman.

Was she as good as Jennie? That was a question which always rose
before him. Was she as kindly? Wasn't she deliberately scheming under
his very eyes to win him away from the woman who was as good as his
wife? Was that admirable? Was it the thing a truly big woman would do?
Was she good enough for him after all? Ought he to marry her? Ought he
to marry any one seeing that he really owed a spiritual if not a legal
allegiance to Jennie? Was it worth while for any woman to marry him?
These things turned in his brain. They haunted him. He could not shut
out the fact that he was doing a cruel and unlovely thing.

Material error in the first place was now being complicated with
spiritual error. He was attempting to right the first by committing
the second. Could it be done to his own satisfaction? Would it
pay mentally and spiritually? Would it bring him peace of mind? He was
thinking, thinking, all the while he was readjusting his life to the
old (or perhaps better yet, new) conditions, and he was not feeling
any happier. As a matter of fact he was feeling worse--grim,
revengeful. If he married Letty he thought at times it would be to use
her fortune as a club to knock other enemies over the head, and he
hated to think he was marrying her for that. He took up his abode at
the Auditorium, visited Cincinnati in a distant and aggressive spirit,
sat in council with the board of directors, wishing that he was more
at peace with himself, more interested in life. But he did not change
his policy in regard to Jennie.

Of course Mrs. Gerald had been vitally interested in Lester's
rehabilitation. She waited tactfully some little time before sending
him any word; finally she ventured to write to him at the Hyde Park
address (as if she did not know where he was), asking, "Where are
you?" By this time Lester had become slightly accustomed to the change
in his life. He was saying to himself that he needed sympathetic
companionship, the companionship of a woman, of course. Social
invitations had begun to come to him now that he was alone and that