ing she yet demanded
all from him in the name of true chivalry. How readily had she given up
all for him! How sweetly she had said she would fill the place left vacant
by her sister, just to save him pain and humiliation!

A desire to stoop and kiss the fair face came to him, not for affection's
sake, but reverently, as if to render to her before God some fitting sign
that he knew and understood her act of self sacrifice, and would not
presume upon it.

Slowly, as though he were performing a religious ceremony, a sacred duty
laid upon him on high, David stooped over her, bringing his face to the
gentle sleeping one. Her sweet breath fanned his cheek like the almost
imperceptible fragrance of a bud not fully opened yet to give forth its
sweetness to the world. His soul, awake and keen through the thoughts that
had just come to him, gave homage to her sweetness, sadly, wistfully, half
wishing his spirit free to gather this sweetness for his own.

And so he brought his lips to hers, and kissed her, his bride, yet not his
bride. Kissed her for the second time. That thought came to him with the
touch of the warm lips and startled him. Had there been something
significant in the fact that he had met Marcia first and kissed her
instead of Kate by mistake?

It seemed as though the sleeping lips clung to his lingeringly, and half
responded to the kiss, as Marcia in her dreams lived over again the kiss
she had received by her father's gate in the moonlight. Only the dream
lover was her own and not another's. David, as he lifted up his head and
looked at her gravely, saw a half smile illuminating her lips as if the
sleeping soul within had felt the touch and answered to the call.

With a deep sigh he turned away, blew out the candle, and left her with
the moonbeams in her chamber. He walked sadly to a rear room of the house
and lay down upon the bed, his whole soul crying out in agony at his
miserable state.

Kate, the careless one, who had made all this heart-break and misery, had
quarreled with her husband already because he did not further some
expensive whim of hers. She had told him she was sorry she had not stayed
where she was and carried on her marriage with David as she had planned to
do. Now she sat sulkily in her room alone, too angry to sleep; while her
husband smoked sullenly in the barroom below, and drank frequent glasses
of brandy to fortify himself against Kate's moods.

Kate was considering whether or