"loaned and hereby
released, to my friend Lawrence Masters, Esq."

"In leaving my whole estate to my beloved son Morgan," read an
explanatory clause of the document, "I do so happy in the knowledge that
I likewise provide for my niece, Anne Masters, to whom he is engaged to
be married, and for whom my love and affection is that of a father."

And Boone Wellver, who had still hoped against hope to receive from Anne
the word that would restore to him at least a fighting chance, heard
nothing. It all seemed to his gloomy analysis relentlessly logical that
the girl, who for a long while had fought for her choice of an alien in
her own world, should go back to her kind. After all she was not for
him, and his dream had only been a fantasy long indulged but no longer
possible of indulgence. So Boone plodded on, and in the more obvious
manifestations of life was not greatly changed. The zest of the game was
gone, but its realities remained to be met, and for him there was a
coward memory to be lived down--the memory of a relapse from which a
woman had saved him.

The ordeal of waiting was almost over for Anne, and the wedding
preparations were under way. From the bed which she had not been able to
leave since the day of Colonel Wallifarro's burial, Mrs. Masters
injected a more fervent enthusiasm into these preliminaries than did the
bride to be.

After the fashion of one who has been embittered and enjoys a belated
triumph, the mother lived in a sort of fantasy which could see no clouds
in the sky of her daughter's future. A factitious gaiety animated her,
even though the death of her mainstay had crushed her into invalidism.

The haunted misery in Anne's face, and the lids that closed as if
against a painful glare when Mrs. Masters forecast the happiness to be,
were things that had no recognition or acknowledgment from the lady in
the sick bed. It was as if her own joy in a dream achieved were
comprehensive enough to embrace and assure the life-long happiness of
her daughter, as the whole includes the part.

But when Anne sat down at her desk one afternoon to address some of the
wedding invitations, she was out of sight of the maternal eye and her
sensitive lips dropped piteously.

On the list before her, made out by herself and augmented by Morgan and
her mother, she had come upon the name of Boone Wellver, and suddenly
the things on her desk swam through a mist of tears.

Anne Masters sat there for a long while, th