ooking down yearningly upon him
till her bosom heaved with a long, deep sigh, and raising her hands
toward him once more she laid them tenderly upon his head.

"Malcolm!"

The effect of that touch was electric. With one bound Stratton leapt
from his chair toward the fireplace, and there stood at bay, as it were,
before the door of the closet, gazing at her wildly for a few moments,
as if at some unreal thing. Then his hands went to his brow, and the
intensity of his gaze increased till, as she took one step toward him
with extended arms, the wild look in his haggard face changed to one of
intense joy.

"Myra!" he cried, and the next moment he had clasped her in his arms.

For the moment it was a different man from the wretched being who had
crept back to his rooms heartsick and despairing, while, after shrinking
from him with the reserve begotten of the doubt and misery which had
been her portion for so long past, the warm clasp of his arms, the
tender, passionate words he uttered, and the loving caresses of his
hands as he drew her face closer and closer to his swept away all
memories of his lapse, and of the world and its ways. He had held her
to his throbbing breast--he, the man to whom her heart had first
expanded two years before--and she knew no more, thought no more of
anything but the supreme joy that he loved her dearly still.

Brief pleasure. She saw his eyes gazing passionately into hers, full of
the newly found delight, and then they contracted, his brow grew rugged,
and, with a hoarse sigh, he shrank from her embrace, looked wildly
round, and then, with a shudder, whispered:

"You here--here! Here? It is you?--it is no dream; but why--why have
you come? It is too horrible."

"Malcolm!" she cried piteously.

"Don't--don't speak to me--don't look at me with those appealing eyes.
I cannot bear it. Pray--pray go."

"Go?" she said, raising her hand to his arm, "when I have at all costs
come to you like this!"

"Yes, yes, go--at once," he cried, and he shrank from her as if in
horror.

"Malcolm--dearest!" she moaned; "you shrink from me. What have I done?"

He was silent in the terrible struggle going on within his breast.

"You do not speak," she whispered, as if in dread that her words should
reach the ears of those without. "You cannot be so cruel as to cast me
off for the past. I did not know then, dear--I was a mere girl--I
accepted him heart-whole. It was my father's and his wish