esn't
love you, if you do not love him, do you think anything but misery
is ahead for you both, if you decide to carry out the terms of that
promise extorted from you?"

She shrank back in her chair. She made no reply, and Hayden came and
stood directly before her, looking down at her.

"And I--am I nothing to you Anne? I love you. What of me, Anne?"

"What can I say?" said she, falteringly. "I am not free."

"If you were free, would you marry me? For that is what I am asking
you to do,--free yourself, and marry me."

She lifted her troubled eyes. "If I were free," she said, "if I were
free--Berkeley, give me time to consider this. It isn't only the
annulling of my marriage to a man I had never seen until the day I
married him, and have never seen since,--it's the breaking of my
promise to Uncle Chadwick--" They were in the library, and she
looked up at the portrait above the mantel. Hayden's glance followed
hers.

"He had no right to extort any such promise from you!" he cried.
"Anne, think it over! Weigh Peter Champneys and me in the balance.
And,--let the best man win, Anne. Will you?"

She regarded him steadfastly. "Yes," she said.

"And when you have decided, you will let me know?"

"I will let you know," said she, smiling faintly.

Berkeley took her hand and kissed it. He looked deep into her eyes.
Then he left her. He had been very quiet, but his passion for her
glowed in his eyes, rang in his voice, and was in the lips that
kissed her palm.

She had not been in the least thrilled by it, but she was not
displeased. She liked him. As for loving him, she didn't think it
was really in her to love anybody. Looking back upon her youthful
infatuation for Glenn Mitchell, she smiled at herself twistedly.
She knew now that she had been in love with the bright shadow of
love.

But, she reflected, if she did not love Hayden, she respected him,
she was proud of him; he represented all that was best and most
desirable in her present life. Life with Berkeley Hayden wouldn't be
empty. And life as she faced it now was as empty as a shell that has
lost even the faintest echo of the sea. Despite its outward glitter,
its mother-of-pearl sheen, she was beginning to be more and more
aware of its innate hollowness. Her young and healthy nature
cried out against its futility. She was in the May morning of her
existence, and yet the joy of youth eluded her.

She had, perhaps, one more year of freedom. Then,--Peter Cham