trust for you. I'll take plenty of warm
sensible clothes when I go; lots of shoes and stockings--things like
that, and if you'll let me, I'll--I'll borrow a hundred dollars to start
myself off with. It isn't a tragedy, Roddy,--not that part of it. You
wouldn't be afraid for any one else as big and strong and healthy as I."

Gradually, out of the welter of scenes like that, the thing got itself
recognized as something that was to happen. But the parting came at last
in a little different way from any they had foreseen.

Rodney came home from his office early one afternoon, with a telegram
that summoned him to New York to a conference of counsel in a big public
utility case he had been working on for months. He must leave, if he
were going at all, at five o'clock. He ransacked the house, vainly at
first, for Rose, and found her at last in the trunk-room--dusty,
disheveled, sobbing quietly over something she held hugged in her arms.
But she dried her eyes and came over to him and asked what it was that
had brought him home so early.

He showed her the telegram. "I'll have to leave in an hour," he said,
"if I'm to go."

She paled at that, and sat down rather giddily on a trunk. "You must
go," she said, "of course. And--Roddy, I guess that'll be the easiest
way. I'll get my telegram to-night--pretend to get it--from Portia. And
you can give me the hundred dollars, and then, when you come back, I'll
be gone."

The thing she had been holding in her hands slipped to the floor. He
stooped and picked it up--stared at it with a sort of half awakened
recognition.

"I f--found it," she explained, "among some old things Portia sent over
when she moved. Do you know what it is? It's one of the note-books that
got wet--that first night when we were put off the street-car. And--and,
Roddy, look!"

She opened it to an almost blank page, and with a weak little laugh,
pointed to the thing that was written there:

"'March fifteenth, nineteen twelve!' Your birthday, you see, and the day
we met each other."

And then, down below, the only note she had made during the whole of
that lecture, he read: "Never marry a man with a passion for
principles."

"That's the trouble with us, you see," she said. "If you were just an
ordinary man without any big passions or anything, it wouldn't matter
much if your life got spoiled. But with us, we've got to try for the
biggest thing there is. Oh, Roddy, Roddy, darling! Hold me tight for
just a