ad after
all not deserted her of his own free will, she had turned to him,
bruised and hurt as she was by that terrible hour with her mother,
confident of his help in her need. No lesson of life was ever to make
Jacqueline anything less than confident of the world's kindness.

But marriage with Philip had at least taught her a better judgment of
men, and at her first sight of Percival Channing she knew that never
again would there be anything he could offer her which she would care to
accept. She realized at last the full depth and enormity of her mistake,
but she set herself proudly to abide by the consequences, asking no
quarter.

Art was still left to her, fame; and these she must win with no
assistance except her own determination. Her career lay open before her.
Perhaps some day her mother and Philip would cease to be ashamed of her;
would even be a little proud of her....

Now, after all, was Art to fail her? Was she never to be famous after
all?

Jacqueline hurriedly turned up the corners of her mouth, having read
somewhere that it is impossible to despair so long as the lips are kept
in that cheerful position. But the fear at her heart remained.

She did not know where to go. Landladies asked questions, and she was
not a very good liar. Suppose they should be rude to her? In all her
life, nobody had ever been rude to Jacqueline. She felt that it would be
more than she could bear.--And at the last to go to some strange
hospital, to suffer, perhaps to die, among people whose names she did
not know, she who had known by name every man, woman, child, and beast
within twenty miles of Storm!... Was there none of all those friends who
would befriend her now, who would take her in without question, and
stand by her until her need was past? Surely somewhere, somewhere....

From long habit, she went on her knees to think her problem out; and the
answer came, as it so often comes to people on their knees--came with a
remembered fragrance of sun upon pine-branches, a steady sound among
tree-tops of the wind that always blows above the world.

Some hours later Jacqueline took a train for Frankfort; and she passed
Storm station at night, on her way to a town in the Kentucky mountains.

* * * * *

So it happened that there came to Philip, in Paris, the letter that told
him he had found both his father and his wife.

Jacques Benoix, glancing out of his schoolhouse door at the unwonted