ide
them?"

"Yes!" Thornly smiled grimly. "That was a devilishly Ibsen-like idea."

"It was a truer touch than the young can understand. Those ghostly women
of an early folly often sit beside a man and the later, purer love of
his life. Some men are able to ignore the gray spectres and get a deal
of comfort from the saner reality of maturer years; I never could. That
girl"--he touched the closed book as if it were the grave that concealed
her--"has always come between me and later desires for a home and closer
ties. Her wonderful eyes, that looked so much and meant so little, have
held me by a power that death and years have never conquered."

"She died then?" Thornly could no longer shield himself from the
undesired knowledge; he must hear the end.

"Yes. She came from near here, poor little soul! I can never get rid of
the impression that her death was hurried, not only by trouble, but
sheer homesickness. You cannot fit these slow, quiet natures into the
city's whirlpool. I was a young fellow, down for the summer. I was
ensnared by her beauty, and hadn't sense enough to see the danger. She
followed me to the city,--took a place in a shop, and was about as
wretched as a sea gull in a desert. I was fool enough to think it a
noble act to befriend her and so I complicated matters. My father must
have found out, though I was never sure of that. Father was a man who
kept a calm exterior under any emotion; but he sent me abroad, and I,
not knowing that he had discovered anything, dared not confess. I meant
to come back at a year's end and set all straight in some way. Good God!
set things straight! How we poor devils go through the world knocking
down things like so many ten pins and solacing ourselves with the fancy
that when we finish the game we'll set the pins in place again! We never
get that chance, Dick, take my word for it! Whatever the plan of life
is, it isn't for us to set up the game! We may play fair, if it is in
us, but once we get through, we need not hope for any going back
process. When I returned at the end of two years, I could not find her!
It wasn't love that set me upon the search for her, Dick, I always knew
that; but I think it was the one decent element that has ever kept me
from going to the deepest depths. I got discouraged, finally, and took
our old family lawyer into my confidence."

"Did you look down here?" Thornly asked slowly. The tale had clutched
him in a nightmarish way that shook his