ay from her, with those passionate accents still ringing in
his ears, his only answer was:

"Family honor demands it."

"Norman," she implored, "listen to me, dear! Do not send me away from
you. I will be so good, so devoted. I will fulfill my duties so well, I
will bear myself so worthily that no one shall remember anything against
me; they shall forget my unhappy birth, and think only that you have
chosen well. Oh, Norman, be merciful to me! Leaving you would be a
living death!"

"You cannot suffer more than I do," he said--"and I would give my life
to save you pain; but, my darling, I cannot be so false to the
traditions of my race, so false to the honor of my house, so untrue to
my ancestors and to myself, as to ask you to stay here. There has never
been a blot on our name. The annals of our family are pure and
stainless. I could not ask you to remain here and treat you as my wife,
even to save my life!"

"I have done no wrong, Norman; why should you punish me so cruelly?"

"No, my darling, you have done no wrong--and the punishment is more mine
than yours. I lose the wife whom I love most dearly--I lose my all."

"And what do I lose?" she moaned.

"Not so much as I do, because you are the fairest and sweetest of women.
You shall live in all honor, Madaline. You shall never suffer social
degradation, darling--the whole world shall know that I hold you
blameless; but you can be my wife in name only."

She was silent for a few minutes, and then she held out her arms to him
again.

"Oh, my love, relent!" she cried. "Do not be so hard on me--indeed, I
have done no wrong. Be merciful! I am your wife; your name is so mighty,
so noble, it will overshadow me. Who notices the weed that grows under
the shadow of the kingly oak? Oh, my husband, let me stay! I love you
so dearly--let me stay!"

The trial was so hard and cruel that great drops fell from his brow and
his lips trembled.

"My darling, it is utterly impossible. We have been deceived. The
consequences of that deceit must be met. I owe duties to the dead as
well as to the living. I cannot transgress the rules of my race. Within
these time-honored walls no woman can remain who is not of stainless
lineage and stainless repute. Do not urge me further."

"Norman," she said, in a trembling voice, "you are doing wrong in
sending me away. You cannot outrage Heaven's laws with impunity. It is
Heaven's law that husband and wife should cleave together. You cannot