he blow had come. The restraint she had put upon herself in Marcia
Lowe's presence faded gradually; but presently a sensation of faintness
warned the awakening senses of self-preservation. Slowly she reached
for the letter which lay near--no one must ever see that! She would
not read it, but it must be destroyed. And even as she argued, Ann
Walden's hot, keen eyes were scanning the pages that unconsciously she
had taken from the envelope.

The date recalled to her the time and place--it had been written that
summer when Theodore Starr had gone to the plague-stricken people back
in the hills; after he had told her they, he and she, could never
marry; that it had all been a mistake. How deadly kind he had been;
how grieved and--honest! Yes, that was it; he had seemed so honest
that the woman who listened and from whose life he was taking the only
beautiful thing that had ever been purely her own, struggled to hide
her suffering, and even in that humiliating hour had sought to help
him. But--if what had been said were true, Theodore Starr had not been
honest with her; even that comfort was to be dashed from her after all
these years. She remembered that he had said that while he lived he
would always honour her, but that love had overcome him and conquered
him. Queenie had always seemed a child to him, he had told her, until
the coming of Hertford, and the sudden unfolding of the child into the
woman. He could no longer conceal the truth--in his concealment danger
lay for them all, and his life's work as well. When he came back--they
would all understand each other better! But he had not come back and
then, when she had discovered poor Queenie's state, it was for Starr as
well as herself that she sternly followed the course she had. She
struck a blow for him who no longer could speak for himself--for he had
died among his people.

"I loved him better than life," those were the words Ann Walden had
spoken to her sister in that very room twelve years ago. The air
seemed ringing with them still; "loved him as you never could have; but
he loved you; he told me so, and because of my love for him--I hid what
I felt. I could have died to make him happy, but you--why, you were
another man's idle fancy while you lured Theodore Starr to his doom.
The only thing you have left me for comfort and solace is this: I can
now keep his dear, pure memory for my own, and love it to the day of my
death."

Ann Walden looked qu