ts mother. Once, not long ago, in a street accident, such
as you know of in our busy city, I seemed very close to death, and in
an instant my spirit seemed to have overleaped the peril and the
terrible scene, and was with you. Afterward, one who sat near me said
that, while some screamed or prayed, I said only 'Grant,' and he asked,
lightly, now that danger was over: 'Is the great general your patron
saint?' And I--I did not know that I had said it, since the name can
never be as near to my lips as it is to my heart."

Harlson did not reply. He could not then. His head was bent.

"And when you were ill--ah! then it was the hardest of all! I dreamed
of the little things I could do for you--how your dear head could rest
on my shoulders, and it might help to ease the pain; how I could save
you from annoyances; how I could--love you!"

"Then come, love of me; I need you--we need each other."

"No, I think a woman who loves a man could scarcely bear that he had
ever been bound to another still living, or even dead."

"But----"

"No. It is not right."

It is not always that even he who is right and strong in the
consciousness of it, and resolute toward the end he is seeking may
express himself as he would in protest against the object yielding to
what is in the social world, though it be wrong. Grant Harlson looked
down upon the slender figure and into the earnest face and was helpless
for the time. Yet he was fixed of mind.

He was very tender with her, but this was not a man to give up easily
what was his. He pleaded with her further, but in vain. She would not
yield.

And so the weeks passed, with the problem yet unsolved. They were
still much together, for she could not turn him away, and he would not
stay away. There was more pleading on his part, and more anger
sometimes. It seemed to him absurd that lives should be blighted
because of a legend.

And she was unhappy, and, it may be, gradually attaining to broader
views and moral bravery. Jean Cornish was courageous, but there was
the legend.

And suddenly all was changed, the problem finding a solution not
expected. Grant Harlson's wife was, as has been said, a woman of
reason and of force, and she had her own life, with its objects. She
chafed under the bond which still connected her with Harlson, and she
broke it cleanly. It was she, not he, who sought divorce, and the
simple logical ground of incompatibility of temperament was all that