ut she couldn't bring herself to sacrifice me, as
she calls it. I've hammered and hammered at her that it's no sacrifice.
She can't see it; just cries and cries."

"Of course she would be unusually sensitive; Her nerves must be all bare
so that she shrinks as one does when a wound is touched."

"That's it. She keeps speaking of herself as if she were a lost soul.
At last we fairly wore her out. After we are married her mother and she
will take the eight o'clock for Kenton. Nobody there knows them, and
she'll have a chance to forget."

"You're a white man, Sam," Jeff nodded lightly. But his eyes were
shining.

"I'm the man that loves her. I couldn't do less, could I?"

"Some men would do a good deal less."

"Not if they looked at it the way I do. She's the same Nellie I've
always known. What difference does it make to me that she stumbled in
the dark and hurt herself--except that my heart is so much more tender
to her it aches?"

"If you hold to that belief she'll live to see the day when she is a
happy woman again," the journalist prophesied.

"I'm going to teach her to think of it all as only a bad nightmare she's
been through." His jaw clinched again so that the muscles stood out
on his cheeks. "Do you know she won't say a word--not even to her
mother--about who the villain is that betrayed her? I'd wring his coward
neck off for him," he finished with a savage oath.

"Better the way it is, Sam. Let her keep her secret.. The least said and
thought about it the better."

Miller looked at his watch. "Perhaps you're right. I've got to go to
work. Remember, seven-fifteen sharp. We need you as a witness. Just your
business suit, you understand. No present, of course."

The wedding took place in the room where Jeff had been used to drinking
chocolate with his little friend only a year before. It was the first
time he had been here since that night when the danger signal had
flashed so suddenly before his eyes. The whole thing came back to him
poignantly.

It was a pitiful little wedding, with the bride and her mother in tears
from the start. The ceremony was performed by their friend Mifflin, the
young clergyman who had a mission for sailors on the waterfront. Nobody
else was present except Marchant, the second witness.

As soon as the ceremony was finished Sam put Nellie and her mother into
a cab to take them to their train. The other three walked back down
town.

As Jeff sat before his desk four hours lat