from her girlhood up, the miserable tragedy might not have happened. She
had failed in a sister's elementary duty.

As a six weeks' wife, what had she done save shiver with a splendid
disgust? Another woman would have fought and perhaps have conquered. She
had made no attempt, and the poor wretch dead, she had trumpeted abroad her
crude opinion of the sex to which he belonged. At every turn she had seen
it refuted. For many months she had known it to be vain and false; and
Nature, who with all her faults is at least not a liar, had spoken over and
over again. She had raised a fine storm of argument, but Nature had
laughed. So had the Literary Man from London. She had a salutary vision of
herself as the common geck and gull of the queerly assorted pair. She
recognized that in order to work out any problem of life one must accept
life's postulates and axioms. Even her mother, from whose gentle lips she
rarely expected to hear wisdom, had said: "I don't see how you're going to
'live,' dear, without a man to take care of you." Her mother was right,
Nature was right, Rattenden was right. She, Zora Middlemist, had been
hopelessly wrong.

* * * * *

When Sypher arrived she welcomed him with an unaccustomed heart-beat. The
masterful grip of his hands as they held hers gave her a new throb of
pleasure. She glanced into his eyes and saw there the steady love of a
strong, clean soul. She glanced away and hung her head, feeling unworthy.

"What's this most particular thing you have to say to me?" he asked, with a
smile.

"I can't tell it to you like this. Let us sit down. Draw up that chair to
the fire."

When they were seated, she said:

"I want first to ask you a question or two. Do you know why Septimus
married my sister? Be quite frank, for I know everything."

"Yes," he said gravely, "I knew. I found it out in one or two odd ways.
Septimus hasn't the faintest idea."

Zora picked up an illustrated weekly from the floor and used it as a
screen, ostensibly from the fire, really from Sypher.

"Why did you refuse the Jebusa Jones offer this morning?"

"What would you have thought of me if I had accepted? But Septimus
shouldn't have told you."

"He didn't. He told Emmy, who told me. You did it for my sake?"

"Everything I do is for your sake. You know that well enough."

"Why did you send for Septimus?"

"Why are you putting me through this interrogatory?" he laughed.

"You will lear