eard his voice again, as it had spoken in the Cemetery at
Gueldersdorp, saying:

"Would I be content to enter, with you for my partner, into a marriage
that should be practically no marriage at all--a formal contract that is
not wedlock? That might never change as Time went on, and ripen into the
close union that physically and mentally makes happiness for men and women
who love? Is that what you ask me, Miss Mildare?"

That was just what she had asked. He had accepted her iron conditions, and
stipulated for nothing. He had given his all. What had she given him?
Nothing but suffering, being rendered pitiless by the ache and sting in
her own bosom--absorbed, swallowed up by her agony of grief for the
Mother, her passion of regret for dead Beauvayse.

Beauvayse.... Suppose he and Owen Saxham stood side by side down there on
the green short grass beneath her windows, which of the two men would
to-day be the dearer and the more desired? The tall, soldierly young
figure, with the sunburnt, handsome face, the gay, amorous, challenging
glance, the red mouth that laughed under the golden moustache, and the
shallow brain under the close-clipped golden curls, or the black-haired,
hulking Doctor, with the square-cut, powerful face and the stern blue
eyes, the man of heart and intellect, whose indomitable, patient
tenderness had led a stricken girl back from the borders of that strange
land where the brain-sick dwell, to wholesome consciousness of common
things, and renewed healthfulness of body and of mind?

She had hardly thanked him. She realised, with tears of shame, that this
inestimable service she had accepted as matter of course. It was the way
of Saxham's world to take of him and render nothing; he who was worthy to
be a King among his fellow-men had been their servant as long as she had
known him.

To call him hard and stern, and seek his aid and sympathy at every pinch;
to deem him cold and grudging, and accept his sacrifices as matter of
course--that was the way of the world with grim-jawed, tender-hearted Owen
Saxham. And she, who had done like the rest, knew him now, and valued him
for what he was, and--loved him!

For this was love that had come upon her like a strong man armed, not as
he had shown himself to her before--laughing and merry, playful and
sweet.... This was no ephemeral, girlish passion, evoked by the beauty of
gay, wanton, grey-green jewel-eyes and a bold, smiling mouth. This was a
love tha