e the door opened and she came toward
him, smiling gladly. The color had come back to her cheeks and her
eyes were bright, though there were still dark rings around them, and
her face told of the weariness her brain had not yet recognized. So
absorbed had she been in giving the physician assistance and carrying
out his directions that she had not thought of her appearance. Her
white dress, which yesterday had been fresh and dainty, was in tatters
and bedraggled strings, and her hair hung down her back in a
disheveled mass. But she came shining down upon Mead's dark thoughts,
fresh and beautiful and glorious beyond compare. He did not remember
rising, but presently he knew that he was on his feet and that she was
standing in front of him. He did not even hear her say, "Doctor Long
says my little Bye-Bye will live and that there will probably be no
serious results."

Then she saw that he was trembling from head to foot, shaking as do
the leaves of a cottonwood tree in a west wind, and she drew back in
alarm, looking at him anxiously.

"What is the--" she began, but the look in his eyes stopped her tongue
and held her gaze, while she felt her breath come hard and her heart
beat like a triphammer. For an instant there was silence. Then
Marguerite heard in a whisper so soft that it barely reached her ears,
"I love you! I love you!" It was the loosing of the floods, and at
once their arms were about each other. But in a second he remembered
that she was to be another man's wife, and the thought came over him
like the drawing down of the black cap over the head of a condemned
man. With a fierce girding of his will he put both his hands upon her
shoulders and drew back.

"I forgot! Forgive me!" The words came in a groan from his lips. "I
forgot you're going to be his wife!"

"Whose?" said Marguerite, stepping back. For the instant she had
forgotten there was any other man in the world.

"Why, Wellesly's!"

"Indeed, I am not!" That one second in Mead's embrace had settled
Marguerite's long-vexed problem, and she felt her mind grow full of
sudden wonder that it had ever troubled her. "He wanted me to marry
him, but I'm not going to do it!"

Again their arms were about each other, their lips met, and her head
was pillowed on his shoulder. Then he remembered the fate that was
hanging over him, and he said bitterly:

"I've no right to ask you to be my wife, for in another week I'll
probably be convicted of murder and sent