him, her face white, something like terror in her eyes.

"Ida!" he cried, rising and stretching out his hands to her.

She shrank back, putting out her hand as if to keep him off.

"Don't--don't come near me! Oh, how could I have forgotten!--how could
I! I must have been mad!"

She wrung her hands and bit her lips as if she were tortured by the
shame of it. His arms fell to his sides, and he stood and looked at her
with his teeth set.

"Ida, listen to me! I--I, too--had forgotten. It--it was the delight of
seeing you. But, dearest, what does the past matter? It _is_ past, I
have come back to you."

She turned to him with suppressed passion.

"Why did you leave me?" came painfully from her white lips.

His face grew red and his eyes fell before hers for a moment. At times
his sacrifice of her to his father's need had seemed not only
inexcusable, but shameful; the shame of it now weighed upon him.

"Ida, for God's sake listen to me!" for, as he had hesitated, she had
turned from him with a gesture of repudiation. "Listen to me! There was
nothing else for me to do; fate left me no alternative. My father--Ida,
how can I tell you!--my father's good name, his reputation, were in my
hands. He had done so much for me--everything! There has never been a
father like him: my happiness stood between him and ruin--ah, not mine
alone, but yours--and I sacrificed them! If you knew all you would
forgive me the wrong I did, great as it was. I think now, if the time
were to come over again, that--yes, I should have to do it!" he broke
out. "I could not have stood by and seen-him ruined and disgraced
without stretching out my hand to save him."

"It was for your father's sake?" she said, almost inaudibly.

"Yes," he responded, grimly. "And it saved him--saved his good name, at
any rate. The rest went--you have heard?"

She made a gesture of assent. He drew a long breath, and held out his
hand to her.

"Can you not forgive me, Ida? If you knew what the sacrifice cost me,
how much I have suffered. She here, dearest"--he drew still closer to
her--"let the past go. It shall, I swear! There is a limit to a man's
endurance, and I have passed it. I love you, Ida, I want you! Come back
with me and let us live for each other, live for love. Dearest, I will
teach you to forget the wrong I did you. It's very little I have to
offer you, a share in the hard life of a farmer out there in the wilds;
but if you were still the mistress of