baby's cry in the next room pierced the
air, and the father gripped the window-seat and quivered as if a bullet
had struck him.

Courtland put his hand lovingly within his friend's arm: "Nelly, old
fellow," he said, "you know that I feel with you--"

"I know, Court!" with a weary sigh. "That's why I sent for you. I had to
have you, somehow!"

"Nelly! There aren't any words made delicate enough to handle this thing
without hurting. It's raw flesh and full of nerves. There's just One
can do anything here! I wish you believed in God!"

"I do!" said Tennelly, in a dreary tone.

"He can come near you and give you strength to bear it. I know, for He
did it for me once!"

Courtland felt as if his words were falling on deaf ears, but Tennelly,
after a pause, asked, bitterly:

"Why did He do this to me, if He's what you say He is?"

"I'm not sure that He did, old man! I think perhaps you and I had a hand
in it!"

Tennelly looked at him keenly for an instant and turned away, silent. "I
know what you mean," he said. "You told me I'd go through hell, and I
have. I knew it in a way myself, but I'm afraid I'd do it again! I loved
her! God! I'm afraid--I _love her yet_! Man! You don't know what an ache
such love is."

"Yes, I do," said Courtland, with a sudden light in his face, but
Tennelly was not heeding him.

"It isn't entirely that I've lost her; that I've got to give up hoping
that she'll some time care and settle down to knowing she is gone
forever! It's the way she went! The--the--the _disgrace_! The
humiliation! The awfulness of the way she went! We've never had anything
like that in our family. And to think my baby has got to grow up to know
that shame! To know that her mother was a disgraceful woman! That I gave
her a mother like that!"

"Now, look here, Tennelly! You didn't know! You thought she would be all
right when you were married!"

"But I _did know_!" wailed Tennelly. "I knew in my soul! I think I knew
when I first saw her, and that was why I worried about you when you used
to go and see her. I knew she wasn't the woman for you. But, blamed fool
that I was! I thought I was more of a man of the world, and would be
able to hold her! No, I didn't, either, for I knew it was like trying to
enjoy a sound sleep in a powder-magazine with a pocketful of matches, to
trust my love to her! But I did it, anyway! I dared trouble! And my
little child has got to suffer for it!"

"Your little child will perhaps b