t, convincing power, when she chose to exert it, now rose in his
memory. Joyce would be but a baby in the hands of such a woman.

A fierce indignation swayed the man. Gone was the sweet memory of the
control that that same charm had once had over him. Only as it now had
touched Joyce did he consider it, and every fibre of his being rose in
resentment.

The savage in him gained strength. He would follow Joyce and have her
yet--in spite of all that had passed!

When Joyce saw and knew--what would he and she care for the rest? He
could deal with Jude--there was still money.

The wild claimed precedence over the innate refinement in Dale, and he
rose to begin his search. He glanced at the clock. It was four. He could
get--somewhere before dark.

The prospect of action gave him relief and he was just turning to the
inner room, when a timid tap upon the outer door stayed him.

His heart gave a great throb. Had she come? Had she returned to him? Had
she found the way back to hell impossible after he--the man she had
deserted--had shown her a path to heaven?

"Come!" he commanded as if defying any other hold that might have power
over her.

Pale, trembling and enveloped in the fur coat and hood, Ruth Dale
entered and closed the door behind her.

Her eyes were wide and fear-filled, but self-possession was not lost.

"John!" she cried pleadingly; "as soon as they told me--I came."

Her outstretched hands recalled Dale to the present.

"Ruth!" he whispered hoarsely, going to her; "this is--kind of you. Let
me take your wraps. Here, sit down."

It was a relief to have her a little distance from him. He took a chair
on the opposite side of the hearth, and struggled to regain his
composure. For the life of him he could not fix his identity in the
place where the sudden convulsion of events had cast them all.

He was an exile from the past of which this lovely woman was a part, and
the present had no space for her.

In a dazed way he noted how exactly the same Ruth looked. When he had
dropped her hands--way back there in time, she appeared precisely the
same to him as she did now, with those same little jewelled hands lying
white and soft in her lap. She had worn a bright gown then, Dale
recalled, but even the gloomy raiment that now enfolded her had no power
to change the woman of her.

Poor Dale could not comprehend in his new birth and life, that such
women as Ruth Dale are Accomplished Achievements of heredity a