some men would do--oh, I should never reproach you, Sydney, but I
would much rather die!"

There was a silence. His head was on the cushion beside her, but his
face was hidden, and she could gather only from his loud, quick
breathing that he was deeply moved. But it was some time before he
spoke. "I don't try to justify myself," he said, at last. "I was
wrong--I know it well enough--and--well if you must have me say it--God
knows that I am--sorry."

"Ah," she said, "that is all I wanted you to say. Oh Sydney, my darling,
can anything now but death come between you and me?"

And she drew his head down upon her bosom and let it rest there, dearer
in the silent shame that bowed it before her than in the heyday of its
pride.

* * * * *

So they were reconciled, and the past sin and sorrow were slowly blotted
out in waters of repentance. Before the world, Sydney Campion is still
the gay, confident, successful man that he has always been--a man who
does not make many friends, and who has, or appears to have, an
overweening belief in his own powers. But there is a softer strain in
him as well. Within his heart there is a chamber held sacred from the
busy world in which he moves: and here a woman is enshrined, with all
due observance, with lights burning and flowers blooming, as his patron
saint. It is Nan who presides here, who knows the inmost recesses of his
thought, who has gauged the extent of his failures and weakness as well
as his success, who is conscious of the strength of his regrets as well
as the burdensome weight of a dead sin. And in her, therefore, he puts
the trust which we can only put in those who know all sides of us, the
worst side even as the best: on her he has even come to lean with that
sense of uttermost dependence, that feeling of repose, which is given to
us only in the presence of a love that is more than half divine.

CHAPTER XLI.

A FREE PARDON.

St. James' Hall was packed from end to end one summer afternoon by an
eager mob of music lovers--or, at least, of those who counted themselves
as such. The last Philharmonic Concert of the season had been announced;
and as one of its items was Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the crowd was,
as usual on such an occasion, a great and enthusiastic one.

Even the dark little gallery near the roof, fronting the orchestra, was
well filled, for there are music lovers (mostly those whose purse is
lean) who declare tha