two in the phaeton, he was more
keenly pained for her sake than his own. To be sure, his first emotion
was that of angry indignation, sending the outraged blood through every
pulse; then, as it cooled, the act appeared so utterly unwomanly. If she
had passed him by carelessly--but to designedly attract his glance, and
stab it thus, was as if a giant had taken a club to kill a butterfly
because it breathed the fragrance of the rose. He shut out that vision.
You can tell what impression she had made upon him, when he always
thought of her as he saw her in the glow of Sylvie's pretty parlor, that
summer night. His healthy, active temperament never brooded over
disagreeable things a moment longer than necessity kept him there.

She faded from his mind by degrees. Even when he took Fred back into the
old regard, he thought of her as the possible wife of some millionnaire.
When she returned to Yerbury, and shut herself up in stately despair,
refusing even Sylvie's proffered sympathy, she puzzled him. How could
she, so fond of admiration and gayety, live this nun's life, without the
nun's spiritual exaltation? He passed her once or twice in the hall, as
he was calling on Fred, but neither made any sign.

Then came that terrible night, when he had found her astray, her brain
consumed by the smouldering fire of isolation, when you have only the
black, choking smoke that never blazes up in purifying flames. There are
thousands of women who have done this, weakly, sentimentally, through
the period of adversity that has tried the metal of all souls; but she,
being stronger, more self-reliant, could not drop into puerile whining.

At Depford Beach they had come in contact again. There was both
attraction and repulsion in these two people, as there often is in
strongly-marked, positive natures. She tolerated him because he was
Sylvie's lover; despised him, believing that he meant to make a
stepping-stone of this girl's wealth and position; and, in spite of
herself, felt the current of his strength and buoyant energy. By slow
degrees the unwilling truth was forced upon her, that God never created
any human soul for its own self-destruction; that there was no absolute
virtue in warping and twisting circumstances into chains and bonds, that
were ordained for higher, nobler purposes. Her mental disease had run
its course. Sylvie's sorrow was the final electric shock that broke the
heavy soil of apathy.

Her utter surprise when she fo