said, detecting her thought. "I'm as sane as you are. Come
here--a little closer--and I'll tell you all about it."

Rather nervously, Nan drew nearer to him.

"Don't be frightened," he said with a strange kindness and gentleness
in his voice. "I had a visitor this morning who told me some
unpalatable truths about myself. He asked me to release you from your
engagement, and I flatly refused. He also enlightened my ignorance
concerning Peter Mallory and informed me he was now free to marry you.
That settled matters as far as I was concerned! I made up my mind I
would never give you up to another man." He paused. "Since then I've
had time for reflection. . . . Reflection's a useful kind of
thing. . . . Then, when you came in just now, looking like a broken
flower with your white face and sorrowful eyes, I made a snatch at
whatever's left of a decent man in this battered old frame of mine."

He paused and took Nan's hand in his. Very gently he drew the ring he
had given her from her finger.

"You are quite free, now," he said quietly.

"No, no!" Impulsively she tried to recover the ring. "Let me be your
wife! I'm willing--quite, quite willing!" she urged, her heart
overflowing with tenderness and pity for this man who was now
voluntarily renouncing the one thing left him.

"But Mallory wouldn't be 'quite willing,'" replied Roger, with a
twisted smile. "Nor am I. And an unwilling bridegroom isn't likely to
make a good husband!"

Nan's mouth quivered.

"Roger--" she began, but the sob in her throat choked into silence the
rest of what she had meant to say. Her hands went out to him, and he
took them in his and held them.

"Will you kiss me--just once, Nan?" he said. "I don't think Mallory
would grudge it me."

She bent over him, and for the first time unshrinkingly and with
infinite tenderness, laid her lips on his. Then very quietly she left
the room.

She was conscious of a sense of awe. First Maryon, and now, to an even
greater degree, Roger, had revealed some secret quality of fineness
with which no one would have credited them.

"I shall never judge anyone again," she told Kitty later. "You can't
judge people! I shall always believe that everyone has got a little
patch of goodness somewhere. It's the bit of God in them. Even Judas
Iscariot was sorry afterwards, and went out and hanged himself."

She was thankful when she came downstairs from Roger's bedroom to find
that there was