nything; but what is a year when one's heart isn't
too sad and weary. Even if you can't draw as well as you used to, you
could take to landscapes, done broadly and strongly. There is no one who
can mass colors and produce such effects as you are able to find. When
you get confidence, I know you will be able to draw also, ever so well,
and, perhaps, for your first trial, you will let me come and sit here
and we'll chat together as we used to, and you'll paint again."

"Never!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, yes, sometime, I'm sure, when you feel better, Gordon, because you
will forgive yourself after a time. That's so much harder for a man to
do than to obtain the pardon of a woman! If you really think you want
mine, it is yours, with all my heart, and----"

But she stopped, looking at him wistfully, her long lashes wet, her
voice faintly tremulous. I knew that she would have granted him not only
the pardon he had sued for, but also her strong and noble self, if he
had begged for it.

He probably forgot his missing hand, for he swept the silk-wrapped thing
across his eyes.

"You must think again, Sophia," he said very slowly. "You can't really
mean it. Do you indeed feel that you can forgive me? Is it true that in
your heart there is such charity?"

"It--I don't think it's charity, Gordon. I--I'm afraid it's something
more than that. Perhaps you don't know as much as you think about
women's hearts. Ask our friend David, here, he has looked into them very
wisely, or he couldn't have written 'Land o' Love.' And now I think I
must be going away. You mustn't use that word charity again, it is one
that hurts just the least little bit. It's so dreadfully inexpressive,
you know! And--and you'll write to me when you want me, won't you?"

"I want you now!" he cried. "I'd give the last drop of my blood for a
shred of hope, for the knowledge that things might again, some day----"

"One moment, Gordon dear," she said, smiling through her tears, and
looked into a tiny gold-meshed bag from which she pulled out a ring with
a glistening stone. "I have always kept it. Do you mean that you would
like me to put it on again?"

"Do, for the love of God!" he cried.

"Yes, and of dear old Gordon," she consented gently.

So I rose, quickly, with something very big and uncomfortable in my
throat, and looked at my watch.

"I must run," I said. "I am ever so late. I'll come in again to-morrow,
Gordon! God bless you both!"

I only heard, confu