uster fortune. At the time, he had told himself, in his way of
escaping the difficult issue, that the pang of leaving her was his
alone. She, in her innocence of love, could hardly feel the death of
what lived so briefly. Now, as it sometimes happened when his anodyne
ceased to work, he knew he had snipped the blossom of her life and she
had borne no fruit of ecstasy; and in the instant of sharp regret it
came upon him that no other woman, through him, should tread the way of
love denied. He stooped to Nellie, standing there before him, and kissed
her on the cheek. Whether in this blended love and pain he was kissing
Ellen or the girl, he did not know, but he saw how Clyde started and
grew luminous, and what it meant to both of them.

"How did you know it?" Clyde was asking. "We are engaged. I wrote to her
to-day. I was going to tell you, but I couldn't. You knew it, didn't
you? You're a brick."

The girl flushed through her powder, and her eyes sent him a starry
gratitude. But now the colonel hardly cared whether they had acted
without his knowledge or whether they were grateful for his sanction. He
and they and Ellen Bayliss seemed to be in a world alone, bound together
by ties that might last--would last, he knew; but the mist cleared away
from his eyes, and the vision of life to come faded, and he saw things
as they were before, and chiefly Ellen standing there unconscious of
him. He walked over to her.

"Ellen," he said bluffly, holding out his hand, "I've got only a minute,
but I want to speak to you if I don't to anybody else."

She straightened and gazed at him, startled out of her part into a life
half joy, half terror. He had taken her hand and held it warmly.

"Ellen," he said, "they're engaged, that boy and girl. Did you know it?"

"No," she answered faintly, but with candor. "No. I've discouraged it.
I thought of you." She paused, too kind to him for more.

"I didn't know," he said. "I hadn't seen her. How should I know she was
like you? How should I know if he lost her he mightn't be making a
mistake? Yes, they're engaged. I sha'n't be at the wedding. I'm going
abroad, but I shall send my blessing. To you, too, Ellen. Good-by. God
bless you."

Then he had walked out of the hall, as alien, with his middle-aged
robustness, as the mortal in fairy revelry; and Ellen, knowing her
towns-people were looking at her in kindly interest, stood with dignity
and yet a curious new consciousness of treasured happ