norable man would do, unbiased by his passion or his pity
for himself. He walked silently beside her as she went up the steep path
to the house.

As for Jane, she did not know that he was silent: she would scarcely
have heard if he had spoken to her. She did not know what this was that
had come to her, that had lifted her whole life upward as by a touch.
She could not look at him. If she could only reach her father and hide
from him, that he might never find her--never! She remembered how a
minute ago she had held his hand to her face, and the hot flood of shame
covered every other thought: the next she glanced shyly at him with a
sweet pride;--he loved her, he would understand! The terrible story he
had told her had passed out of her mind like a breath of smoke in
sunshine. He loved her: she could keep him out of all danger. Even if
she had remembered that she could never be his wife, it would not have
troubled her. He loved her! She thought no more of marriage than the
bird in its first song of dawn thinks of the barred lines and visible
notes to which its music might somewhere be written down.

Neckart followed her up the steps and into the wide hall, carrying his
hat behind him in his hand. The damp air wet his hair, and it hung
lankly back from his haggard face. He felt physically ill. He had acted
like a brute, a coward! This was the end of his stern resolve, his
lifelong self-denial!

A lamp burned at the foot of the wide staircase. He paused beside it:
she had gone up a step or two, and halted, her hand on the rail, looking
down. "Good-night!" she said shyly.

The light shone full on the pink glow in her cheeks, the loose hair
glistening like a golden mist, the half-frightened, half-triumphant
gleam shot down from the blue eyes.

He did not answer her.

The delicate virgin bloom of this love which he had coveted so madly an
hour ago scarcely stirred his heart now with pleasure. A man cannot live
all the time on the heights of emotion or of religion; the air is too
rarefied up there for healthy lungs; he comes down punctually to the
ordinary levels of his saner self; and Neckart, on his ordinary level,
was an exceedingly practical, honest man. He knew that he had brought
irreparable injury to this girl, and that it was his duty now to make
amends as best he could.

REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

A WISH.

When thou, O Death! shalt wai