y, and are not. We have been more like two chess-players. We
have had a mutual pleasure in the game, but we have been none the less
antagonists. The playing is over, that is all. It doesn't matter who
has won the game. We will call it drawn, or you may have it. But it
is ended!"

She stood with one hand upon her breast. There came a shadow of pain
to her face, and a hard look followed.

"It is nonsense talking about the game. The playing ended a year ago,
and you were the winner. Now you are careless about the prize! Well"
(bitterly), "it may not be worth much--to you."

"It is worth a great deal. It has been worth a great deal to me. But
I must relinquish it."

"Why did you make me care for you?" she demanded, fiercely, again.

"I did not do more than you did. As I said before, we played the game
together. It is but the usual way of a flirting man and woman. We
should have each been more on guard."

The woman was silent for a little time, and it was evident that she was
making an effort at self-control. She succeeded. She had half-turned
her back to Harlson, and when she again faced him, she had assumed her
dignity.

"You are right, after all," she said. "I did not consider your own
character well enough. You tire of things. You will tire of the woman
you love now. And you will come back to me, just because I have been
less sentimental, and, so, less monotonous than some others. Whether
or not I shall receive you time will determine. Is that the way you
want me to look at it?"

He bowed. "That is perhaps as good a way as any. It doesn't matter.
Will you shake hands, Ada?"

She reached out her hand listlessly, and he took it. A minute later
and he was on the street. And so the last link of one sort with the
past was broken. It was long--though he had no concealments from
her--before he told Jean of this interview. And then he did not tell
the woman's name, nor did she care to know.

CHAPTER XXIV.

AS TO THOSE OTHERS.

Time passes, even with an impatient lover, and so there came an end at
last to Grant Harlson's season of probation. There was nothing
dramatic about the wedding.

To him the ceremony was merely the gaining of the human title-deed to
the fortune which was his on earth, and to Jean Cornish it was but the
giving of herself fully to the man--that which she wished to do with
herself. There were few of us present, but we were the two's closest
friends. They