o marry him."

She tried to answer as stoutly as before, "And that's a lie, too,"
but the words stuck in her throat.

"Oh! God," he cried, and turned away from her.

There was a stove in the room, and he stepped up to it, opened the
iron door, and thrust the paper into the crackling fire.

"What is that you are burning?" she cried. And in another moment,
before he knew what she was doing, she had run to the stove, pulled
back with her bare hands the hot door that he was closing with the
tongs, thrust her arm into the fire, and brought out the paper. It
was in flames, and she rolled it in her palms until little but its
charred remains lay in her scorched fingers. But she saw what it had
been--her own abandoned letter to Red Jason. Then, slowly looking up,
she turned back to her husband, pale, a fearful chill creeping over
her, and he had thrown himself down on a chair by the table and
hidden his face in his arms.

It was a pitiful and moving sight. To see that man, so full of hope
and love and simple happy trust a little hour ago, lie there with
bent head and buried eyes, and hands clasped together convulsively,
because the idol he had set up for himself lay broken before him,
because the love wherein he lived lay dead; and to see that woman, so
beautiful, and in heart so true, though dogged by the malice of evil
chance, though weak as a true woman may be, stand over him with
whitening lips and not a word to utter--to see this was to say, "What
devil of hell weaves the web of circumstance in this world of God?"

Then, with a cry of love and pain in one, she flung herself on her
knees beside him, and enfolded him in her arms. "Michael," she said,
"my love, my darling, my dear kind husband, forgive me, and let me
confess everything. It is true that I was to have married Jason, but
it is not true that I loved him. I esteemed him, for he is of a
manly, noble soul, and after the departure of my father and the death
of my mother, and amid the cruelties of my brothers and your own
long, long silence, I thought to reward him for his great fidelity.
But I loved you, you only, only you, dear Michael, and when your
letter reached me at last I asked him to release me that I might come
to you, and he did so, and I came. This is the truth, dear Michael,
as sure as we shall meet before God some day."

Michael Sunlocks lifted his face and said, "Why did you not tell me
this long ago, Greeba, and not now when it is dragged from y