ade god from the table, examined it closely, and put
it down again, to come and stand with his back to the fire, one arm
flung across the mantel, and his gloomy eyes fixed on her. Julia met the
rushing, engulfing wave of her own emotion bravely.

"Jim," she said bravely, "does it mean nothing to you that there were
other women in _your_ life before you knew me?"

"Dearest," he answered seriously and quickly, "God knows that I would
cut my hand off to be able to blot that all out of my boyhood. Those
things mean nothing to a man, Ju, and they meant less to me than to most
men. Women can't understand that, but if you knew how men regard it, you
would realize that very few can bring their wives as clean a record as
mine!"

He had said this much before, never anything more. Julia, looking at him
now with all the tragic sorrow of her life in her magnificent eyes, felt
the utter impossibility of convincing him that this accusation on her
part, and bravely boyish and honest confession on his, had any logical
or possible connection with the momentous conversation that they were
having to-night. Her heart recoiled in sick terror from any word that
would hurt or estrange him now, but she might have found that word, and
might have said it, could she have hoped that it would convey her
meaning to him. But Jim's standard of morals, for himself, was, like
that of most men, still the college standard. It was too bad to have
clouded the bright mirror, but it was inevitable, given youth and red
blood. And it was admirable to regret it all now. Any fresh attempt on
Julia's part to bring to his realization the parallel in their
situations, would have elicited from him only fresh, youthful
acknowledgments, until that second when anger and astonishment at her
bold effort to reduce the two distinct codes to one would end this
talk--like so many others!--with new coldnesses and silences. Julia
abandoned this line of argument once and for all.

"I never cared for any one but you in my life, Jim," she said, with dry
lips.

"I know," he muttered, brushing his hair back with an impatient hand. A
second later he came to kneel penitently before her. "I'm sorry,
sweetheart," he said pleadingly. "You're a little angel of forgiveness
to me--I don't deserve it! I know how I make you suffer!"

"Jim," she said, feeling old, and tired, and cold to her heart's core,
"do you think you do?"

"I know how _I_ suffer!" he answered bitterly.

"Jim, sup