return."

She was still in her sheltering shadow, but upon Peter's end of the
garden seat the moonlight, unchecked by the trees, streamed white and
strong. She looked into his face, fully revealed to her now, and she
realized, before he spoke, that he was going to refuse her sacrifice;
she realized it because she saw in his face a deeper emotion for her
than he had ever shown before. He loved her not enough--and yet too
much!--to marry her. She saw that and was prepared for his next words.

"To such a woman the man I have in mind could not give less than his
best," he said. And there was no longer any question, any hesitancy in
his tone. "To one so generous no man could be ungenerous--I should
have known that! Perhaps," he went on, with a note of distress and
apology, "perhaps such things should not be talked about. Perhaps it
is--humiliating----"

"To me the truth could never be humiliating," she answered, with quick
reassurance.

"Then it is best to speak it?" he pleaded, as if for
self-justification. "Then it is best to speak it, after all? For it
does make things--plain; it does show one the right, the decent course."

"It's best to speak it," she assented kindly; and she held out her hand
to him.

He lifted her hand and kissed it. And when he spoke again, his voice
faltered: "When a man knows a woman like you, Charlotte, he sees that
happiness--or unhappiness--doesn't matter so much as he's thought.
There are other things--better things--to live for. You've found
them--and now I'm going to find them, too, my dear."

So, for the second time that day, Peter went from a woman who loved
him. The night and the stars and the flowers had done their best to
quicken his pulses; to blur his vision of the truth; to blunt his sense
of absolute, unswerving honor. But in the end Charlotte herself had
defeated what the night was fain to do for her with its witchery; she
had defeated the night's intents with her measureless honesty and
generosity--to which Peter's own generosity and honesty could but
respond. To use a woman like Charlotte as a barrier between himself
and another woman was impossible to him. Neither for Sheila's safety,
nor for any benefit to himself, could he do a thing so base. He
recognized now that marriage with Charlotte--even without that utter
love he had given to Sheila--might be a gracious, even a happy destiny
for him. But having found her so ready to sacrifice herself, he could