ament. We two women just stood aside with life's artifices and
concealments and let our own hearts do the talking.

She said she had come because she felt that if she talked with me I
might be better able to understand Alfred when he came and that she had
seen that the judge was very determined, and she thoroughly recognized
his force of character. We stopped there while I gave her the document
to read. I suppose it was dishonorable, but I needed her protection from
it. I'm glad she had the strength of mind to walk with a head high in
the air to Judy's range and burn it up. Anything might have happened if
she hadn't. And even now I feel that only my marriage vows will close up
the case for the judge--even yet he may--But when Ruth had got done
with Alfred, she had wiped Judge Wade's appreciation of him completely
off my mind and destroyed it in tender words that burned us both worse
than Judy's fire burned the letter. She did me an awfully good service.

"And so you see, you lovely woman you, do you not, that God has
made you for him as a tribute to his greatness and it is given to
you to fulfil a destiny?" She was so beautiful as she said it that
I had to turn my eyes away, but I felt as I did when those awful
'_let-not-man-put-asunder_'--from Mr. Carter--words were spoken
over me by Mr. Raines, the Methodist minister. It made me wild, and
before I knew it I had poured out the whole truth to her in a perfect
cataract of words. The truth always acts on women as some hitherto
untried drug, and you can never tell what the reaction is going to be.
In this case I was stricken dumb and found it hard to see.

"Oh, dear heart," she exclaimed as she reached out and drew me into her
lovely gracious arms, "then the privilege is all the more wonderful for
you, as you make some sacrifice to complete his life. Having suffered
this, you will be all the greater woman to understand him. I accept my
own sorrow at his hands willingly, as it gives me the larger sympathy
for his work, though he will no longer need my personal encouragement
as he has for years. In the light of his love this lesser feeling for
Doctor Moore will soon pass away and the accord between you will be
complete." This was more than I could stand and feeling less than a
worm, I turned my face into her breast and wailed. Now who would have
thought that girl could dance as she did?

By this time I was in such a solution of grief that I would soon have
had to be soppe