at we are the deed
of all we think and feel--the wish of all we will to be?"

Travis turned quickly: "Is that true? Then let me wish--as I do,
Helen; let me wish that I might love you as you deserve."

She saddened: "Oh, but you have wished--you have willed--too
often--too differently. It can never be now."

"I understand you," he said. "It is natural--I should say it is
nature--nature, the never-lying. I but reap my own folly, and now
good-bye forever, Helen, and may God bless you and bring you that
happiness you have deserved."

"Do you know," she said calmly, "that I have thought of all that,
too. There are so many of us in the world, and so little happiness
that like flowers it cannot go around--some must go without."

She held his hand tightly as if she did not want him to go.

"My child, I must go out of your life--go--and stay. I see--I
see--and I only make you wretched. And I have no right to. It is
ignoble. It is I who should bear this burden of sorrow--not you. You
who have never sinned, who are so young and so beautiful. In time you
will love a nobler man--Clay--"

She looked at him, but said nothing. She knew for the first time the
solution of her love's problem. She was silent, holding his hand.

"Child," he said again. "Helen, you must do as I say. There is
happiness for you yet when I am gone--when I am out of your life and
the memory and the pain of it cease. Then you will marry Clay--"

"Do you really think so? Oh, and he has loved me so and is so
splendid and true."

Travis was silent, waiting.

"Now let me go," she said--"let me forget all my madness and folly in
learning to love one whose love was made for mine. In time I shall
love him as he deserves. Good-bye."

Then she broke impulsively away, and he watched her walk back through
the shadows and under the clouds.

At the turning of the path across the meadow, he saw another shadow
join her. It was Clay, and the two went through the twilight
together.

Travis turned. "It is right--it is the solution--he alone deserves
her. I must reap my past, reap it and see my harvest blighted and
bound with rotten twine. But, oh, to know it when it is too late--to
know that I might love her and could be happy--then to have to give
it up--now--now--when I need it most. The Deed," he said--"we are the
deed of all we think and feel."

CHAPTER XXVI

THE MODEL MILL

The discovery of coal and iron made both the old Bishop and
Westmorela