re given he would break the lock,
so Meredith was married in the little American chapel on the hillside
and she looked as if she were walking in a love-filled dream as she went
out of Doris's life.

Thornton took his wife to the Philippines by way of her New York home.
For a week they stayed in it, and it was there that the first sense of
loss touched Meredith. The stirring effect of all that she had recently
gone through was wearing away, and Doris, and all that Doris meant in
the past, haunted the big, quiet house.

"This will never do," thought Thornton, and for the first time he sensed
the power the older sister had over the younger. It was already making
its way into his kingdom, and Thornton never shared what was his own!

Doris remained abroad for a time, readjusting her life as one does who
is maimed. Her devotion to Meredith, she saw now, had been her one
passion--to what could she turn?

The letters that presently came from Meredith, while they set much of
her fear at rest, made her feel more lonely, nor did they seem to set
her free to make permanent plans. She sank into a waiting mood--waiting
for letters!

"I'll play around Europe for awhile," she whimsically decided. "I'll buy
things for that chapel Sister Angela is planning, and polish my manners.
And," here Doris grew grave, "I'll think of David Martin! I wish I could
love Davey enough to marry him as I feel he wants me to--and let him
blot out this ache for Merry." But that was not to be.

And Meredith wrote her letters to her sister and smiled upon her
husband--for after the third month of her marriage that was the best she
could do for either of them. All the ideals of her self-blinded life
were being swept away in the glaring flame of reality.

Thornton was still infatuated and went to great lengths to prove to his
pale, starry-eyed wife her power over him. He was delighted at the
impression she made upon the rather hectic but exclusive circle in which
he moved; but he dreaded, vaguely to be sure, her hearing, in a gross
way, references to his life before she entered it. So quite frankly and
a bit sketchily he confided it to her himself.

"Of course that is ended forever," he said; "you have led me from
darkness to light, you wonderful child! Why, Merry, you simply have made
a new and better man of me--I understand the real value of things now."

But did he?

Merry was looking at him as if she were doubting her senses. Things she
had hear