ing of unhappiness in your
life--"

"Please, please," she entreated, breathlessly. Then, taking the leap:
"Ah, I love you, I love you!"

"--Forget all your unhappiness," he went on, holding her close to him.
"Forget the one great mistake we both made. Forget everything,
everything, everything but that we love each other."

"Don't let me think, then," she cried. "Don't let me think. Make me
forget everything, every little hour, every little moment that has
passed before this day. Oh, if I remembered once, I would kill you,
kill you with my hands! I don't know what I am saying," she moaned, "I
don't know what I am saying. I am mad, I think. Yes--I--it must be
that." She pulled back from him, looking into his face with wide-opened
eyes.

"What have I said, what have we done, what are you here for?"

"To take you away," he answered, gently, holding her in his arms,
looking down into her eyes. "To take you far away with me. To give my
whole life to making you forget that you were ever unhappy."

"And you will never leave me alone--never once?"

"Never, never once."

She drew back from him, looking about the room with unseeing eyes, her
fingers plucking and tearing at the lace of her dress; her voice was
faint and small, like the voice of a little child.

"I--I am afraid to be alone. Oh, I must never be alone again so long as
I shall live. I think I should die."

"And you never shall be; never again. Ah, this is my birthday, too,
sweetheart. I am born again to-night."

Laura clung to his arm; it was as though she were in the dark,
surrounded by the vague terrors of her girlhood. "And you will always
love me, love me, love me?" she whispered. "Sheldon, Sheldon, love me
always, always, with all your heart and soul and strength."

Tears stood in Corthell's eyes as he answered:

"God forgive whoever--whatever has brought you to this pass," he said.

And, as if it were a realisation of his thought, there suddenly came to
the ears of both the roll of wheels upon the asphalt under the carriage
porch and the trampling of iron-shod hoofs.

"Is that your husband?" Corthell's quick eye took in Laura's
disarranged coiffure, one black lock low upon her neck, the roses at
her shoulder crushed and broken, and the bright spot on either cheek.

"Is that your husband?"

"My husband--I don't know." She looked up at him with unseeing eyes.
"Where is my husband? I have no husband. You are letting me remember,"
she cried, in