it was all nonsense
to say that love never died. She had loved him, and there was never
anything so dead as that love of hers.

He had been saved one thing, however; he had never seen her with Wallie
Sayre. Then, one day in the country while he trudged afoot to make one
of his rare professional visits, they went past together in Wallie's
bright roadster. The sheer shock of it sent him against a fence, staring
after them with an anger that shook him.

Late in November Elizabeth went away for a visit, and it gave him
a breathing spell. But the strain was telling on him, and Bassett,
stopping on his way to dinner at the Wheelers', told him so bluntly.

"You look pretty rotten," he said. "It's no time to go to pieces now,
when you've put up your fight and won it."

"I'm all right. I haven't been sleeping. That's all."

"How about the business? People coming to their senses?"

"Not very fast," Dick admitted. "Of course it's a little soon."

After dinner at the Wheelers', when Walter Wheeler had gone to a vestry
meeting, Bassett delivered himself to Margaret of a highly indignant
harangue on the situation in general.

"That's how I see it," he finished. "He's done a fine thing. A finer
thing by a damned sight than I'd do, or any of this town. He's given up
money enough to pay the national debt--or nearly. If he'd come back
with it, as Judson Clark, they wouldn't have cared a hang for the past.
They'd have licked his boots. It makes me sick."

He turned on her.

"You too, I think, Mrs. Wheeler. I'm not attacking you on that score;
it's human nature. But it's the truth."

"Perhaps. I don't know."

"They'll drive him to doing it yet. He came back to make a place for
himself again, like a man. Not what he had, but what he was. But they'll
drive him away, mark my words."

Later on, but more gently, he introduced the subject of Elizabeth.

"You can't get away from this, Mrs. Wheeler. So long as she stands off,
and you behind her, the town is going to take her side. She doesn't know
it, but that's how it stands. It all hangs on her. If he wasn't the man
he is, I'd say his salvation hangs on her. I don't mean she ought to
take him back; it's too late for that, if she's engaged. But a little
friendliness and kindness wouldn't do any harm. You too. Do you ever
have him here?"

"How can I, as things are?"

"Well, be friendly, anyhow," he argued. "That's not asking much. I
suppose he'd cut my throat if he knew, but I'