an_ still be love, I have a life to spend in
contradiction of to-day. I shall remain here twenty-four hours
waiting for my answer, and each hour until it comes will be a
purgatory. I've forfeited my right to come to you without
permission. I must wait for your verdict. I don't even claim the
right to expect an answer--but I know you will give one. Not to do
so would be to brand me, for life, not only with bitter hatred but
bitter contempt as well."

At dawn, without having been to bed, he posted the letter and sat down
to wait with the anxiety of a defendant who has seen the jury locked
into its chamber of fateful decision.

When Eben Tollman came into the post office that morning, he called for
his mail and that of the Williams household.

Conscience's note to Stuart he did not mail. Stuart's letter to
Conscience he did not deliver, but later in the day he deposited both in
a strong-box in which he kept his private papers.

Three days Stuart Farquaharson spent waiting for an answer and while he
waited his face became drawn, and the ugly doubt of the first hours
settled into a certainty. There would be no answer. He had told her that
to ignore his plea would be the superlative form of scorn--and she had
chosen it.

Conscience, too, who had humbled herself, was waiting: waiting at first
with a trust which refused to entertain doubt, and which withered as the
days passed into such an agony that she felt she must go mad. If Stuart
had deliberately done _that_--she must make herself forget him because
to hold him in her heart would be to disgrace herself. The man, in the
hour of ugly passion, had been the real one after all; the other only a
pleasing masquerade!

"Did you mail my letter?" she finally demanded of Tollman, and he
smilingly responded. "I don't think I ever forgot to post a letter in my
life."

In a final investigation she walked to the village and inquired at the
hotel desk, "Is Mr. Farquaharson here?"

"No, Miss Conscience," the clerk smilingly responded, "he checked out
last night. Said he'd send his address later."

One afternoon several days later a stranger left the train at the
village and looked about him with that bored and commiserating
expression with which city men are apt to regard the shallow skyline of
a small town. He was of medium height and carefully groomed from his
well-tailored clothes to the carnation in his buttonhole and manicured
polish o