n dead heart
awaking. She looked at the key and all at once put a hand to her mouth
as though to still words clamoring there.

"Judith," he said tremulously, between short struggles for breath,
"all these years, after I found there was no chance for me, I reckon
I've--prayed only one prayer. 'God, let it be Sassoon that she loved!'
And I've prayed that mighty near every day. The thought that maybe it
was Valiant has haunted me like a ghost. You never told--and I never
dared ask you. Judith--"

Her face was still averted, and when she did not speak he turned his
head from her on the pillow, with a breath that was almost a moan. She
started, looking at him an instant in piteous hesitation, then swiftly
kissed the little key and closed her hand tight upon it. Truth? She saw
only the pillow and the graying face upon it! She threw herself on her
knees by the couch and laid her lips on the pallid forehead.

"It--it _was_ Sassoon, Monty," she said, and her voice broke on the
first lie she had ever told.

"Thank God!" he gasped. He struggled to raise himself on his elbow, then
suddenly the strength faded out and he settled back.

Her cry brought the doctor, but this time the restorative seemed of no
avail, and after a time he came and touched her shoulder. With a last
long look at the ash-pale face on the settee she followed him from the
room. In the yellow parlor he put her into a chair.

"No," he said, in answer to her look, "he won't rouse again."

"I will wait," she told him, and he left her, shutting the door with
careful softness.

* * * * *

But the slight figure with its silver hair, sitting there, was not
alone. Ghosts were walking up and down. Not the misty wraiths John
Valiant had at times imagined went flitting along the empty corridors,
but faces very clear in the sunlight, that came and went with the
memories so long woven over by the shuttle of time--evoked now by the
touch of a key that her hand still clenched tightly in its palm.

There welled over her in a tide those days of puzzle, the weeks of
waiting silence, the slow inexorable months of heartache, the long years
that had deepened the mystery of Beauty Valiant's exile. In the first
shock of the news that Sassoon had fallen by his hand, she had thought
she could not forgive him that broken faith. She and his promise to her
had not weighed in the balance against his idea of manly "honor"! But
this bitterness had at