es
the false and true."

There was no falsity in his love, in his aching desire to lay hold of
happiness out of the muddle of his life, to bestow happiness if he
could upon a woman who like himself had suffered misfortune. Within
him there was the instinct to clutch firmly this chance which lay at
hand. For Hollister the question was not, "Is this thing right or
wrong in the eyes of the world?" but "Is it right for her and for me?"
And always he got the one answer, the answer with which lovers have
justified themselves ever since love became something more than the
mere breeding instinct of animals.

Hollister could not see himself as a man guilty of moral obliquity if
he let the graveyard of the past retain its unseemly corpse without
legal exhumation and examination, and the delivering of a formal
verdict upon what was already an accomplished fact.

Nevertheless, he forced himself to consider just what it would mean to
take that step. Briefly it would be necessary for him to go to London,
to secure documentary evidence. Then he must return to Canada, enter
suit against Myra, secure service upon her here in British Columbia.
There would be a trial and a temporary decree; after the lapse of
twelve months a divorce absolute.

He was up against a stone wall. Even if he nerved himself to public
rattling of the skeleton in his private life, he did not have the
means. That was final. He did not have money for such an undertaking,
even if he beggared himself. That was a material factor as inexorable
as death. Actual freedom he had in full measure. Legal freedom could
only be purchased at a price,--and he did not have the price.

Perhaps that decided Hollister. Perhaps he would have made that
decision in any case. He had no friends to be shocked. He had no
reputation to be smirched. He was, he had said with a bitter
wistfulness, a stray dog. And Doris Cleveland was in very much the
same position. Two unfortunates cleaving to each other, moved by a
genuine human passion. If they could be happy together, they had a
right to be together. Hollister challenged his reason to refute that
cry of his heart.

He disposed finally of the last uncertainty,--whether he should tell
Doris. And a negative to that rose instantly to his lips. The past was
a dead past. Let it remain dead--buried. Its ghost would never rise to
trouble them. Of that he was very sure.

Hollister went to bed, but not to sleep. He heard a great clock
somewhe