again."

"No," she said brokenly; "leave me here."

"This is the end, Marian!" The words came short and crisp. "I ask your
forgiveness no more. There are some things which are past forgiveness. I
only ask you to forget.--Good-bye!"

* * * * *

XXXIV

* * * * *

The long, sleepless night which followed Marian's harrowing experience,
painful as it was, proved the most vital moment of her life. From
girlhood it had been hers to receive rather than to give. Her beauty and
vivacity had always attracted attention and homage, her positive nature
demanded and was given leadership, until she came to regard this as
natural and to be expected. To have Huntington question her judgment was
as novel as it was unpleasant, to have Merry suggest a worldliness in
her approach to life struck her as absolutely incongruous. Mrs. Thatcher
knew herself to be a competent woman, and as no one before had
questioned her ethics, she accepted the successful outcome of her
undertakings as conclusive proof that her judgment was correct.

She might pass Huntington's comment by as the expression of one who
could look at any question only from a man's standpoint, she could make
light of what Merry said on the ground that the girl knew so little of
life; but in her experience with Hamlen she had come face to face with a
mistake so real that it compelled a readjustment of her perspective. She
could harbor no resentment against him: the climax had come as the
direct result of her own error in judgment, and the responsibility
belonged to her alone. Ever since that eventful meeting in Bermuda she
had seen the battling of conflicting emotions. To her more than to any
one else should have come knowledge of the limit beyond which this
self-tortured soul could not be pressed. She had deceived herself in
regard to the reclamation; Hamlen's condition remained unchanged;
Huntington had simply developed him to a point where he had gained
better control. Beneath the deceptive smoothness of the surface still
surged the turmoil started twenty years before, seething with
unsatisfied yearnings, and kept under only by the superb strength of
will which she herself at last had broken down. Huntington had warned
her of the danger but she refused to recognize its existence. Marian
could blame no one but herself, and the fact that her intentions had
been of the best did not mitigate the tragedy she h