t I love you with all
my heart and soul!"

Then for the first and only time in his life Thorpe fell to weeping,
while she, understanding, stood by and comforted him.

Chapter LVIII

The few moments of Thorpe's tears eased the emotional strain under
which, perhaps unconsciously, he had been laboring for nearly a year
past. The tenseness of his nerves relaxed. He was able to look on the
things about him from a broader standpoint than that of the specialist,
to front life with saving humor. The deep breath after striving could at
last be taken.

In this new attitude there was nothing strenuous, nothing demanding
haste; only a deep glow of content and happiness. He savored
deliberately the joy of a luxurious couch, rich hangings, polished
floor, subdued light, warmed atmosphere. He watched with soul-deep
gratitude the soft girlish curves of Hilda's body, the poise of her
flower head, the piquant, half-wistful, half-childish set of her red
lips, the clear starlike glimmer of her dusky eyes. It was all near to
him; his.

"Kiss me, dear," he said.

She swayed to him again, deliciously graceful, deliciously
unselfconscious, trusting, adorable. Already in the little nothingnesses
of manner, the trifles of mental and bodily attitude, she had assumed
that faint trace of the maternal which to the observant tells so plainly
that a woman has given herself to a man.

She leaned her cheek against her hand, and her hand against his
shoulder.

"I have been reading a story lately," said she, "that has interested
me very much. It was about a man who renounced all he held most dear to
shield a friend."

"Yes," said Thorpe.

"Then he renounced all his most valuable possessions because a poor
common man needed the sacrifice."

"Sounds like a medieval story," said he with unconscious humor.

"It happened recently," rejoined Hilda. "I read it in the papers."

"Well, he blazed a good trail," was Thorpe's sighing comment. "Probably
he had his chance. We don't all of us get that. Things go crooked and
get tangled up, so we have to do the best we can. I don't believe I'd
have done it."

"Oh, you are delicious!" she cried.

After a time she said very humbly: "I want to beg your pardon for
misunderstanding you and causing you so much suffering. I was very
stupid, and didn't see why you could not do as I wanted you to."

"That is nothing to forgive. I acted like a fool."

"I have known about you," she went on. "It has all