ly through it, she was as confident of the
future as though never had evil menaced her. She felt new strength
coursing through her blood, new hope rising within her, new certainty
that all was right with her and Mark King, that all would be right
eternally. Terror and anguish and despair that had surged over her in so
many great flooding waves now receded and were gone; in their place
shone the great flame of life triumphant; she thrilled through with the
largeness of life.

Never, thank God, would she forget how Mark King, forgetful of self,
contemptuous of the frightful odds against him, had hurled himself into
the midst of those drunken brutes; never would she forget how godlike he
had stood forth in her eyes as those others leaped upon him and he beat
them back. Forgetful of self--he had always been forgetful of self! She
could not think of him as she had ever thought of any other man she had
ever known--for what other man would have come to her as he had done,
courting death gladly if only he could stand between her and the hideous
thing that attacked her? The rush of great events had swept her mind
clear of pettiness and prejudice; they bore her on from familiar
view-points and to new levels; like roaring winds out of a tempestuous
north they cleared away the wretched fogs that had enwrapped a
self-centred girl; they made her see a man in the naked glory of his
sheer, clean manhood.

To her now he stood forth clothed in magnificence. She could think upon
him only in superlatives. He was fearless and he was unselfish; he was
kind and generous and as honest-hearted as God's own clear sunshine.
She knew now, suddenly and for the first time, because he had shown her,
what the simple word _man_ meant. How far apart he stood from such as
Brodie, the beast! How high above such as Gratton!--And once, in the
city, she had been ashamed of him and had turned to Gratton! Because he
had appeared to her without just so much black cloth upon his back cut
in just such a style! And now how bitterly she was ashamed of her shame.
But for only an instant. Thereafter she forgot shame of any sort and
exulted in her pride of him and in her pride that she was proud.

Yes, in glad defiance of a Gloria that had been, she was proud of the
manhood of a man who had beaten her! He had been right; he had done that
as the last argument with an empty-headed, selfish girl who deserved no
better at his hands, a girl who had been like the Gratton