ife seen any one so supremely happy. But yet--though she
was reassured--there was something else in the atmosphere that disturbed
her. She could not have said wherefore, but she was sorry for
Monck--deeply, poignantly sorry. She was certain, with that inner
conviction that needs no outer evidence, that it was more than weariness
and the strain of anxiety that had drawn those deep lines about his eyes
and mouth. He looked to her like a man who had been smitten down in the
pride of his strength, and who knew his case to be hopeless.

As for Monck, he went through his ordeal unflinching, suffering as few
men are called upon to suffer and hiding it away without a quiver. All
through the hours of his journeying, he had been prepared to face--he
had actually expected--- the worst. All through those hours he had
battled to reach her indeed, straining every faculty, resisting with
almost superhuman strength every obstacle that arose to bar his
progress. But he had not thought to find her, and throughout the
long-drawn-out effort he had carried in his locked heart the knowledge
that if when he came at last to her bedside he found her--this woman
whom he loved with all the force of his silent soul--white and cold in
death, it would be the best fate that he could wish her, the best thing
that could possibly happen, so far as mortal sight could judge, for
either.

But so it had not been. At the very Gate of Death she had waited for his
coming, and now he knew in his heart that she would return. The love
between them was drawing her, and the man's heart in him battled
fiercely to rejoice even while wrung with the anguish of that secret
knowledge.

He hardly knew how he went through those moments which to her were such
pure ecstasy. The blood was beating wildly in his brain, and he thought
of that devils' tattoo on the roof at Udalkhand when first that dreadful
knowledge had sprung upon him like an evil thing out of the night. But
he held himself in an iron grip; he forced his mind to clearness. Even
to himself he would not seem to be aware of the agony that tore him.

They whispered together for a while over the baby's head, but he never
remembered afterwards what passed or how long he knelt there. Only at
last there came a silence that drifted on and on and he knew that
Stella was asleep.

Later Mrs. Ralston stooped over him and took the baby away, and he laid
his head down upon the pillow by Stella's and wished with all his s