marked out from
his fellows, distinguished and very handsome. Society, however, had ceased
to recognize him for a long time, and he did not seek it. For two or three
years he practised law now and then. He took cases, preferably criminal
cases, for which very often he got no pay; but that, too, ceased at last.
Now, in his quiet, sober intervals he read omnivorously, and worked out
problems in physics for which he had a taste, until the old appetite
surged over him again. Then his spirits rose, and he was the old brilliant
talker, the joyous galliard until, in due time, he became silently and
lethargically drunk.

In one of his sober intervals he had met Sally Seabrook in the street. It
was the first time in four years, for he had avoided her, and though she
had written to him once or twice, he had never answered her--shame was in
his heart. Yet all the time the old song was in Sally's ears. Jim
Templeton had touched her in some distant and intimate corner of her
nature where none other had reached; and in all her gay life, when men had
told their tale of admiration in their own way, her mind had gone back to
Jim, and what he had said under the magnolia-trees; and his voice had
drowned all others. She was not blind to what he had become, but a deep
belief possessed her that she, of all the world, could save him. She knew
how futile it would look to the world, how wild a dream it looked even to
her own heart, how perilous it was; but, play upon the surface of things
as she had done so much and so often in her brief career, she was seized
of convictions having origin, as it might seem, in something beyond
herself.

So when she and Jim met in the street, the old, true thing rushed upon
them both, and for a moment they stood still and looked at each other. As
they might look who say farewell forever, so did each dwell upon the
other's face. That was the beginning of the new epoch. A few days more,
and Jim came to her and said that she alone could save him; and she meant
him to say it, had led him to the saying, for the same conviction was
burned deep in her own soul. She knew the awful risk she was taking, that
the step must mean social ostracism, and that her own people would be no
kinder to her than society; but she gasped a prayer, smiled at Jim as
though all were well, laid her plans, made him promise her one thing on
his knees, and took the plunge.

Her people did as she expected. She was threatened with banishment fr