re gold to reward this treachery.

When Dearborn came home that night from Versailles he found a note on
the table, leaning up against the box in which the two comrades kept
their mutual fund of money. Dearborn's advance royalty was all gone but
a hundred francs.

"I have gone to London," Fairfax's note ran. "Sell anything of mine
you like before I get back, if you are hard up.--TONY."

He spent two pounds on a pistol. If he had chanced to meet Cedersholm
with her, he would have shot him. From the hour he had received her
letter and learned that she was going to marry Cedersholm, he had been
hardly sane.

At five o'clock on a bland, sweet afternoon, three days after he had
left Paris, he was shown up to her sitting-room at the Whiteheart Hotel,
in Windsor. He had traced her there from the Ritz.

Mary Faversham, who was alone, rose to meet him, white as death.

"Tony," she said, "don't come nearer--stand there, Tony. Dear Tony, it
is too late, too late!"

He limped across the room and took her in his arms, looking at her
wildly. Her lips trembled, her eyes filled.

"I married him by special license yesterday, Tony. Go, go, before he
comes."

He saw she could not stand. He put her in a chair, fell on his knees and
buried his head in her lap. He clung to her, to the Woman, to his Vision
of the Woman, to the form, the substance, the reality which he thought
at last he had really caught for ever. She bent over him and kissed his
hair, weeping.

"Go," she said. "Go, my darling."

Fairfax had not spoken a word. Curses, invectives, prayers were in his
heart. He crushed them down.

"I love you for your pride," she said. "I adore you for the brave demand
you made me. I could not fulfil it, Tony, for your sake."

Then he spoke, and meant what he said, "You have ruined my life."

"Oh no!" she cried. "Don't say such a thing!"

"Some day I shall kill him." He had risen, with tears in his eyes. "You
loved me," he challenged, "you did love me!"

She did not dare to say "I love you still." She saw what the tragedy
would be.

"We could not have been poor," she said, "could we, dear?"

He exclaimed bitterly, "If you thought of that, you could not have
cared." And she was strong enough to take advantage of his change.

"I suppose I could not have cared as you mean, or I should never have
done this."

Then Fairfax cursed under his breath, and once again, this time
brutally, caught her in his arms and kiss