ave through the gate of atonement, could he be
reinstated as a soldier in the ranks of the conventionally righteous.
True, the devotion of a loving woman, aided by a train of circumstances
strikingly fortuitous and little short of miraculous, had averted the
final price-paying in penal retribution. But the fact remained. He was
a felon.

Into this gaping wound which might otherwise have slain him had been
poured the wine and oil of a great love; a love so clean and pure in its
own well-springs that it could perceive no wrong in its object; could
measure no act of loyal devotion by any standard save that of its own
greatness. This love asked nothing but what he chose to give. It would
accept him either as he was, or as he ought to be. The place he should
elect to occupy would be its place; his standards its standards.

Just here the reasoning angel opened a door and thrust him out upon the
edge of a precipice and left him to look down into the abyss of the
betrayers--the pit of those whose gift and curse it is to be the
pace-setters. In a flash of revealment it was shown him that with the
great love had come a great responsibility. Where he should lead,
Margery would follow, unshrinkingly, unquestioningly; never asking
whether the path led up or down; asking only that his path might be
hers. Instantly he was face to face with a fanged choice which
threatened to tear his heart out and trample upon it; and again he
recorded his decision, confirming it with an oath. The price was too
great; the upward path too steep; the self-denial it entailed too
sacrificial.

"We have but one life to live, and we'll live it together, Margery,
girl, for better or for worse," was his apostrophic declaration, made
while he was turning into Shawnee Street a few doors from his lodgings;
and a minute later he was opening the Widow Holcomb's gate.

The house was dark and apparently deserted as to its street-fronting
half when he let himself in at the gate and ran quickly up the steps.
The front door was open, and he remembered afterward that he had
wondered how the careful widow had come to leave it so, and why the hall
lamp was not lighted. From the turn at the stair-head he felt his way to
the door of his study. Like the one below, it was wide open; but some
one had drawn the window shades and the interior of the room was as dark
as a cavern.

Once, in the novel-writing, following the lead of many worthy
predecessors, Griswold had made