hat the seed,
destined to flower into awful crime some dozen or more years later, put
forth its first bud at this fatal hour.

* * * * *

He wrote her a letter. He had the grace to do that. Addressing her simply
as Ermentrude, he told her that he had been called home to enter upon the
serious business of life. That he was not likely to come back, and as she
was not really his wife, however pleasing the fiction had been in which
they had both indulged, it seemed to him wiser to end their happy romance
thus suddenly and while much of its glamour remained, than to linger on
and see it decay day by day before their eyes till nothing but bitterness
remained. He loved her and felt the wrench more than she did, but duty
and his obligations as a man, etc., etc., till it ended in his signature
limited to initials like his love.

Despicable! the work of a man without conscience or heart! Yes, and he
knew it, and for weeks his sleep was broken by visions and his waking
hours rendered dreadful by fears. How had she taken this cool assumption
that the ceremony performed in the path of the snow was voided by lack of
proof? To whom had she ascribed the loss of her ring, and what must she
think of him? He had left Nice almost immediately, but wherever he went,
in whatever hotel he stayed, or through whatever street he passed, he was
always expecting to see her figure rise up before him in the majesty of
innocence and outraged love.

Thus several weeks passed, and seeing nothing of her, hearing nothing
from her, a different apprehension darkened his days and despoiled him of
rest at night. Grief if not shame had killed her; and the weight of her
fancied doom lay heavy on his heart. At last he could bear it no longer,
and stealing back to Nice he entered it one dark night and prepared to
learn for himself what he feared to trust to the discretion of another.
Alone, with hidden face and heavily throbbing heart, he trod the familiar
ways and encircled the familiar walls. Had she been there----

But the windows were blank and the place desolate, and he fled the spot
and the town, with his questions unasked and his fears unallayed. In two
days he had sailed for home. With the ocean between them he might forget;
and in time he did. As week followed week, and the silence he had half
trusted, half feared, remained unbroken, his equanimity gradually
returned, and he prepared to face the prospect of his new marr