packet of letters from her mother. They were exquisite in phrasing and
in sentiment. She wondered if she might not borrow from them something
of their grace.

As she opened the drawer, her eyes fell on the little carved box.
Mechanically she reached for it, and touched the spring. Then she stood
staring down at her father's ring!

The words which she had once said to Diana echoed insistently in her
ears: "People who can love many times, who can go from one person to
another, aren't worth thinking about."

Why--she was like her father! He had loved once, and then he had loved
again--and he had broken her mother's heart!

Shuddering, she flung the ring from her, and it rolled under the
cabinet. She knelt to grope for it, and, having found it, she shut the
box. But, like Pandora, she had let out a whole army of evil fancies,
and they continued to oppress her.

When she went back to her desk she could not write, and at last she put
away her papers and, wrapping herself in her long white coat, climbed to
the cupola.

She had slept there many times with her mother. With only the stars
above them, and on each side a view of the wide stretches of the sea,
they had talked together, and Bettina had learned the beauty of the
older woman's nature; having suffered much, she had forgiven everything.

"Your father," she would say, "was like a child seeking the pot of gold
at the end of the rainbow. He was always looking for romance, forgetting
that the most wonderful romance is that of the hearthstone and of the
quiet heart. If he had ever really loved he would have known the joy of
self-sacrifice, of self-effacement--but he did not love----"

"Love is self-sacrifice." Such had been the verdict of the woman who had
given all, and who had received nothing. It was a hard philosophy,
acquired after years of dreariness, and the child had listened and
absorbed and believed. She had heard nothing of love's fulfilment, of
the raptures of mutual tenderness. Hence she had been content with
Anthony's somewhat somber wooing, until that moment when she had drifted
with Justin through infinite space, and had learned the things which
might be.

The thought of herself as mistress of Anthony's big house by the sea
weighed heavily upon her. In those great rooms she would move softly for
the rest of her days. Anthony would work and read and ponder, and when
he was at Harbor Light she would sit lonely through the gray winter
evenings, and th