sequel. He had never concealed nor thought of concealing his
condition, and it never occurred to him that Jean Cornish was not aware
of it. He had supposed her, if she cared for him as he hoped, to be
somewhat troubled, but to understand that he would do no mean thing,
and that all would be well in time. Then came the sorrow of it, for
Jean Cornish learned, quite accidentally, that Grant Harlson was a man
with a living wife.

She would not believe it at first, and, when convinced, was dazed and
could not understand. No such shock had ever before come into her
life. This man, of whom she had made a hero, a trickster and a liar!
It seemed as if the world were gone! There was a meeting and an
explanation, and she learned how wrong she had been, in one way.

He put the case earnestly and desperately. He would not yield her. He
knew she loved him, and he knew she was too good and wise to suffer
forever herself or let him suffer because, in society, there were
blunders. There was a way out--a clean, right way--and they must take
it. He could get a divorce on grounds of mere desertion, and three
people, at least, would be better off. It was pitiful, the scene, one
afternoon. He had called to see her, and was pleading with her. It
was in the drawing-room, and there were stained windows they both
remembered in later years. He had talked of his bondage and of his
hopes. She was not quite herself; she was suffering too much. I know
what happened. Grant told me once of the wrench of him then, and of
all the scene. There had been a fierce appeal from him. He had become
almost enraged.

"And so," he said, "you would have a man's marriage like the black
biretta of Spain that is drawn over the prisoner's head before they
garrote him?"

She did not move nor speak, but stood straight and silent, her hands
hanging at her sides with the palms loosely open, the very abandonment
of pathetic helplessness.

Such a little woman, to withstand a storm of passion!

As he wondered at her curiously blended strength and weakness, a
sun-shaft blazed through the crimson glass of the upper window. The
reddened light, falling on her up-springing almost coppery locks,
seemed to the man's excited fancy a crown, of thorns, crimsoned with
blood, and there was, oddly enough, a cross in the window.

The thought of another vicarious sacrifice awed him. Must this be one,
too?

"Mistakes, dear, are not crimes. Can you not understan