if she had, she would not have given back that
sinuous necklace of discoloured pearls.

By the way, what had he done with the necklace? He remembered now. He
had thrown it far into the shrubbery, for the pearls were dead and the
love was dead.

"First from the depths of the sea and then from the depths of my love."
The mocking words, written in faded ink on the yellowed slip of paper,
danced impishly across the pages of Ralph's letters. He had a curious
fancy that if his love had been deep enough the pearls would not have
turned black.

Impatiently, he rose from the table and paced back and forth restlessly
across the library. "I'm a fool," he growled; "a doddering old fool.
No, that's not it--I've worked too hard."

Valiantly he strove to dispel the phantoms that clustered about him. A
light step behind him chimed in with his as he walked and he feared to
look around, not knowing it was but the echo of his own.

He went to a desk in the corner of the room and opened a secret drawer
that had not been opened for a long time. He took out a photograph,
wrapped in yellowed tissue paper, and went back to the table. He
unwrapped it, his blunt white fingers trembling ever so slightly, and
sat down.

A face of surpassing loveliness looked back at him. It was Evelina, at
the noon of her girlish beauty, her face alight with love. Anthony
Dexter looked long at the perfect features, the warm, sweet, tempting
mouth, the great, trusting eyes, and the brown hair that waved so
softly back from her face; the all-pervading and abiding womanliness.
There was strength as well as beauty; tenderness, courage, charm.

"Mate for a man," said Dexter, aloud. For such women as Evelina, the
knights of old did battle, and men of other centuries fought with their
own temptations and weaknesses. It was such as she who led men to the
heights, and pointed them to heights yet farther on.

Insensibly, he compared Ralph's mother with Evelina. The two women
stood as far apart as a little, meaningless song stands from a great
symphony. One would fire a man with high ambition, exalt him with
noble striving--ah, but had she? Was it Evelina's fault that Anthony
Dexter was a coward and a shirk? Cravenly, he began to blame the
woman, to lay the burden of his own shortcomings at Evelina's door.

Yet still the face stirred him. There was life in those walled
fastnesses of his nature which long ago he had denied. Self-knowledge
at last c