was representing some great business in the West, until
he was welcomed as a promising client. He hung around and when she came
in one day her father was forced to introduce them. The remainder is the
same world-old story----a good looking, glib-tongued man, plying every
art known to an expert, on an innocent girl."

"Is he dead, Ruth?"

"We thought so. We hoped so."

"Your mother did not feel that her people might be suffering for her as
she was for them?"

"Not after she appealed to them twice and received no reply."

"Perhaps they tried to find her. Maybe she has a father or mother who
is longing for word from her now. Are you very sure you are right in not
wanting to know?"

"She never gave me a hint from which I could tell who or where they
were. In so gentle a woman as my mother that only could mean she did not
want them to know of her. Neither do I. This is the photograph I prefer;
please use it."

"I'll put back the trunk in the morning, when I can see better," said
the Harvester.

The Girl closed it, and soon went to bed. But there was no sleep for
the man. He went into the night, and for hours he paced the driveway in
racking thought. Then he sat on the step and looked at Belshazzar before
him.

"Life's growing easier every minute, Bel," said the Harvester. "Here's
my Dream Girl, lovely as the most golden instant of that wonderful
dream, offering me----offering me, Bel----in my present pass, the lips
and the love of my little sister who never was born. And I've hurt
Ruth's feelings, and sent her to bed with a heartache, trying to make
her see that it won't do. It won't, Bel! If I can't have genuine love, I
don't want anything. I told her so as plainly as I could find words, and
set her crying, and made her unhappy to end a wonderful day. But in
some way she has got to learn that propinquity, tolerance, approval,
affection, even----is not love. I can't take the risk, after all these
years of waiting for the real thing. If I did, and love never came, I
would end----well, I know how I would end----and that would spoil her
life. I simply have got to brace up, Bel, and keep on trying. She thinks
it is nonsense about thrills, and some wonderful feeling that takes
possession of you. Lord, Bel! There isn't much nonsense about the thing
that rages in my brain, heart, soul, and body. It strikes me as the
gravest reality that ever overtook a man.

"She is growing wonderfully attached to me. 'Couldn't live w