ary Graham.

"I tore that from a paper in Cordova," she said. "They have nothing to
do with me. The girl lives in Texas. But don't you see something in her
eyes? Can't you see it, even in the picture? She has on her wedding
things. But it seemed to me--when I saw her face--that in her eyes were
agony and despair and hopelessness, and that she was bravely trying to
hide them from the world. It's just another proof, one of thousands,
that such unreasonable things do happen."

He was beginning to feel a dull and painless sort of calm, the stoicism
which came to possess him whenever he was confronted by the inevitable.
He sat down, and with his head bowed over it took one of the limp,
little hands that lay in Mary Standish's lap. The warmth had gone out of
it. It was cold and lifeless. He caressed it gently and held it between
his brown, muscular hands, staring at it, and yet seeing nothing in
particular. It was only the ticking of Keok's clock that broke the
silence for a time. Then he released the hand, and it dropped in the
girl's lap again. She had been looking steadily at the streak of gray in
his hair. And a light came into her eyes, a light which he did not see,
and a little tremble of her lips, and an almost imperceptible
inclination of her head toward him.

"I'm sorry I didn't know," he said. "I realize now how you must have
felt back there in the cottonwoods."

"No, you don't realize--_you don't!_" she protested.

In an instant, it seemed to him, a vibrant, flaming life swept over her
again. It was as if his words had touched fire to some secret thing, as
if he had unlocked a door which grim hopelessness had closed. He was
amazed at the swiftness with which color came into her cheeks.

"You don't understand, and I am determined that you _shall_," she went
on. "I would die before I let you go away thinking what is now in your
mind. You will despise me, but I would rather be hated for the truth
than because of the horrible thing which you must believe if I remain
silent." She forced a wan smile to her lips. "You know, Belinda
Mulrooneys were very well in their day, but they don't fit in now, do
they? If a woman makes a mistake and tries to remedy it in a fighting
sort of way, as Belinda Mulrooney might have done back in the days when
Alaska was young--"

She finished with a little gesture of despair.

"I have committed a great folly," she said, hesitating an instant in his
silence. "I see very clearly now t