swered almost inaudibly. "Yes, I understood."

"Seven months--and Ludwell Cary lies unavenged. I have been slow. But I
had to break a strong chain, Jacqueline. I had fastened it, link by
link, around my soul. It was not easy to break--it was not easy! And I
had to find a path in a desert place."

She bowed her head upon her arms. "Do I not know what it was? I have
seen--I have seen. O Lewis, Lewis!"

"It is broken," he said, "and though the desert is yet around me, my
feet have found the path. To-morrow, Jacqueline, I give myself up."

She uttered a cry, turned, and threw herself into his arms. "To-morrow!
O Love!"

[Illustration: DRINK TO ME ONLY WITH THINE EYES]

He bent over her with broken words of self-reproach. She stopped him
with her hand against his lips. "No, I am not all unhappy--no, you
have not broken my heart--you have not ruined my life! Don't say
it--don't think it! I love you as I loved you in the garden at Fontenoy,
as I loved on our wedding eve, in the house on the Three-Notched Road! I
love you more deeply now than then--"

"I have come," he answered, "to be sorry for almost all my life. Even to
my father I might have been a better son. The best friend a young man
ever had--that was Mr. Jefferson to me! and it all ended in the letter
which he wrote last August. I was a leader in a party in whose
principles I believed and still believe, and I betrayed my party.
To-night I think I could give my life for one imperilled field, for one
green acre of this land--and yet I was willing to bring upon it strife
and dissension. Ingrate and traitor--hard words and true, hard words and
true! I might have had a friend--and always I knew he was the man I
would have wished to be--but, instead, I thought of him as my foe and I
killed him. I have brought trouble on many, and good to very few. I have
wronged you in very much. But I never wronged you in my love--never,
never, Jacqueline! That is my mountain peak--that is my cleansing
sea--that is that in my life which needs no repenting, that is true,
that is right! Oh, my wife, my wife!"

The night wind blew against them. Fireflies shone and grey moths went by
to the lighted windows; above the treetops a bat wheeled and wheeled.
The clock struck again, then from far away a whippoorwill began to call.
They sat side by side upon the doorstone, her head against his shoulder,
their hands locked.

"What will you do?" he said. "What will you do? Day and night I thin