opped at the gate. Richard Travis lit a cigar before mounting
his horse. He seemed at times to-night restless, yet always
determined.

She had never seen him so nearly preoccupied as he had been once or
twice to-night.

"Do you not think?" he asked, after a while as they stood by the
gate, "that I should have a sweet answer soon?"

Her eyes fell. The death song of the crepe-myrtle, aroused by a south
wind suddenly awakened, smote her painfully.

"You know--you know how it is, Richard"--

"How it was--Alice. But think--life is a practical--a serious thing.
We all have had our romances. They are the heritage of dreaming
youth. We outlive them--it is best that we should. Our spiritual life
follows the law of all other life, and spiritually we are not the
same this year that we were last. Nor will we be the next. It is
always change--change--even as the body changes. Environment has
more to do with what we are, what we think and feel--than anything
else. If you will marry me you will soon love me--it is the law of
love to beget love. You will forget all the lesser loves in the great
love of your life. Do you not know it, feel it, Sweet?"

She looked at him surprised. Never before had he used any term of
endearment to her. There was a hard, still and subtle yet determined
light in his eyes.

"Richard--Richard--you--I"--

"See," he said, taking from his vest pocket a magnificent ring set in
an exquisite old setting--inherited from his grandmother, and it had
been her engagement ring. "See, Alice, let me put this on to-night."

He took her hand--it thrilled him as he had never been thrilled
before. This impure man, who had made the winning of women a
plaything, trembled with the fear of it as he took in his own the
hand so pure that not even his touch could awaken sensuality in it.
The odor of her beautiful hair floated up to him as he bent over. A
wave of hot passion swept over him--for with him love was
passion--and his reason, for a moment, was swept from its seat. Then
almost beside himself for love of this woman, so different from any
he had ever known, he opened his arms to fold her in one
overpowering, conquering embrace.

It was but a second and more a habit than thought--he who had never
before hesitated to do it.

She stepped back and the hot blood mounted to her cheek. Her eyes
shone like outraged stars, dreaming earthward on a sleeping past,
unwarningly obscured by a passing cloud, and then flashing