aying," he went on, after a little, "I have often
envied you."

"Don't," said Dexter, again. "As you were also saying, distance hides
the peak and you do not see the scars."

Thorpe's eyes sought the picture of Dexter's wife with an evident
tenderness, mingled with yearning. "I often think," he sighed, "that
in Heaven we may have a chance to pay our debt to woman. Through
woman's agony we come into the world, by woman's care we are nourished,
by woman's wisdom we are taught, by woman's love we are sheltered, and,
at the last, it is a woman who closes our eyes. At every crisis of a
man's life, a woman is always waiting, to help him if she may, and I
have seen that at any crisis in a woman's life, we are apt to draw back
and shirk. She helps us bear our difficulties; she faces hers alone."

Dexter turned uneasily in his chair. His face was inscrutable. The
silent moment cried out for speech--for anything to relieve the
tension. Through Ralph's letters Evelina's eyes seemed to be upon him,
beseeching him to speak.

"I knew a man,", said Anthony Dexter, hoarsely, "who unintentionally
contracted quite an unusual debt to a woman."

"Yes?" returned, Thorpe, inquiringly. He was interested.

"He was a friend of mine," the Doctor continued, with difficulty, "or
rather a classmate. I knew him best at college and afterward--only
slightly."

"The debt," Thorpe reminded him, after a pause. "You were speaking, of
his debt to a woman."

Dexter turned his face away from Thorpe and from the accusing eyes
beneath Ralph's letters. "She was a very beautiful girl," he went on,
carefully choosing his words, "and they loved each other as people love
but once. My--my friend was much absorbed in chemistry and had a
fondness for original experiment. She--the girl, you know--used to
study with him. He was teaching her and she often helped him in the
laboratory.

"They were to be married," continued Dexter. "The day before they were
to be married, he went to her house and invited her to come to the
laboratory to see an experiment which he was trying for the first time
and which promised to be unusually interesting. I need not explain the
experiment--you would not understand.

"On the way to the laboratory, they were talking, as lovers will. She
asked him if he loved her because she was herself; because, of all the
women in the world, she was the one God meant for him, or if he loved
her because he thought her beautifu