t. Yet he's been
so different lately, it gave me a kind of hope."

Jerome started. "How has he been different?" he asked.

"More confident, less doubtful of himself. It's not anything he has
said. It's in his speech, his walk. He even carries his head
differently, as if he had a right to. Well, we talked half the night
last night, and he went home to write the letter. He promised me not to
mail it till he'd seen me once more; but nothing will make any
difference."

"You won't beseech him?"

"No. He is a man. He must decide."

"You won't tell him what depends on it!"

"Nothing depends on it," said Mary, calmly. "Nothing except his own
happiness. I shall find mine in letting him accept his life according to
his own free will."

There was something majestic in her mental attitude. Wilmer felt how
noble her maturity was to be, and told himself, with a thrill of pride,
that he had done well to love her.

"Marshby is coming," he said. "I want to show you both the picture."

Mary shook her head. "Not this morning," she told him, and he could see
how meagre canvas and paint must seem to her after her vision of the
body of life. But he took her hand.

"Come," he said, gently; "you must."

Still holding her flowers, she went with him, though her mind abode with
her lost cause. Marshby halted when he saw them coming, and Jerome had
time to look at him. The man held himself wilfully erect, but his face
betrayed him. It was haggard, smitten. He had not only met defeat; he
had accepted it. Jerome nodded to him and went on before them to the
barn. The picture stood there in a favoring light. Mary caught her
breath sharply, and then all three were silent. Jerome stood there
forgetful of them, his eyes on his completed work, and for the moment he
had in it the triumph of one who sees intention, brought to fruitage
under perfect auspices. It meant more to him, that recognition, than any
glowing moment of his youth. The scroll of his life unrolled before him,
and he saw his past, as other men acclaimed it, running into the future
ready for his hand to make. A great illumination touched the days to
come. Brilliant in promise, they were yet barren of hope. For as surely
as he had been able to set this seal on Mary's present, he saw how the
thing itself would separate them. He had painted her ideal of Marshby;
but whenever in the future she should nurse the man through the mental
sickness bound always to delay his march, she wo