hich he had hoped to see die, and
yet, just from his passionate contact with Dixie Hart, he was full of
comprehension and pity for his wife's plight--at least, as he now saw
it.

"Listen to me, Hettie," he began, and his voice shook with deep feeling.
"You've been right all along. Don't you bother about that. It was _me_
that was crooked. In this life folks don't love in the highest and best
way but once--not but once in a lifetime. Dick Wrinkle was your first
and only abiding fancy. The feeling that made you turn me down and take
him when you was a girl and I was a big blockhead of a boy was born of
God in heaven. I was the one that was making a mistake when I come and
begged you to marry me while that pure thing was still alive in your
heart. A love like that never dies; it is too sweet and glorious to die.
I see now, too, that you was plumb right about wanting to take care of
his mammy and daddy, and about wanting that sermon preached, and about
erecting a lasting monument to commemorate his name. You had to do all
them things because they was part and parcel of you yourself, and the
constancy God planted in you. I can say honestly that I'm glad you still
love him. You wouldn't be a high sort of a woman if you did change.
Death can't separate folks that love; they go on and on--side by side,
hand in hand, heart to heart--through all eternity."

She actually gasped. She rose, and stood staring toward the door, a deep
frown on her face; she shrugged her shoulders; she clinched her fists;
she rapped the ground sharply with her foot; then she slowly bent down
over him, resting her thin left hand on his broad shoulder while she
peered with a stare of would-be incredulity into his enraptured face.

"Look at me, Alfred!" she cried, in a rasping tone. "_You know you don't
mean one single word of all you've just said!_"

"Why, I do," he insisted, blandly. "As God is my judge, I do. There
ain't no such thing as _two_ loves--a first and a second. When the real
thing comes to a body he knows it. A feller could be blinded for a time,
I reckon, in hot-blooded youth, while he was in close pursuit of a thing
that kept slipping away from him, as was my case when Dick and me was
going nip and tuck to see which could get ahead; but the genuine, real
thing is as different as--as day from night."

She drew herself up straight, and heaved a deep, lingering sigh. "I
don't believe you mean a word of what you say," she repeated. "It ain'