were married, under an assumed name,--but it
was a marriage good in law. There's no question of that, you understand.
Then I left her up there in the Adirondacks, and went home. My father's
illness was prolonged, and his condition justified me in asking your
mother to wait. She knew the circumstances and agreed to remain away
until I saw my way clear to acknowledging her and taking her home. You
were born up there. Your mother grew impatient and hurt because I could
not go back to her. But I could not--it would have ruined all my chances
at home. When I went to find my wife she had disappeared. She was a
proud woman, and I suppose she had good cause for hating me."

He told the story fully, filling in the gaps in her own knowledge. He
did not disguise the fact of his own half-hearted search for the woman
he had deserted. He even told of the precautions he had taken to assure
himself of the death of Edna Kelton by visiting Montgomery to look at
her grave before his marriage to Hallie Singleton. He had gone back
again shortly before he made the offer to pay for Sylvia's schooling,
and had seen her with her grandfather in the little garden among the
roses.

Outside the guard slowly passed back and forth. Sylvia did not speak;
her seeming inattention vexed and perplexed him. He thought her lacking
in appreciation of his frankness.

"Thatcher knows much of this story, but he doesn't know the whole," he
went on. "He believes it was irregular. He's been keeping it back to
spring as a sensation. He's told those men out there that he can break
me; that at the last minute he will crush me. They're waiting for me
now--Thatcher and his crowd; probably chuckling to think how at last
they've got me cornered. That's the situation. They think they're about
rid of Morton Bassett."

"You left her; you deserted her; you left her to die alone, unprotected,
without even a name. You accepted her loyalty and fidelity, and then
threw her aside; you slunk away alone to her grave to be sure she
wouldn't trouble you again. Oh, it is black, it is horrible!"

Sylvia was looking at him with a kind of awed wonder in her eyes. For an
instant there had been a faint suggestion of contrition in his tone, but
it was overwhelmed by his desire for self-justification. It was of
himself he was thinking, not of the deed in itself, not of the woman he
had left to bear her child in an alien wilderness.

"I tried to do what I could for you. I want you to kn