-is the greatest tragedy in the world. To love
as she loved and to find every anchor to which she tied the faith of her
life rotten, to have her heart seared with faithlessness--to see her
child--her flesh and blood scorned, to have her very soul spat
upon--that's the essence of sorrow, my dear."

He looked up into her eyes, bent to kiss her hand, and after he had
picked up his cane and his hat from the rack, toddled down the walk to
the street, a sad, thoughtful, worried little man, white-clad and serene
to outward view, who had not even a whistle nor a vagrant tune under his
breath to console him.

That day, after her father's insistence, Laura Van Dorn changed from the
night watch to the day nurse, and from that day on for ten days, she
ministered to Grant Adams' wants. Mechanically she read to him from such
books as the house afforded--Tolstoi--Ibsen, Hardy, Howells,--but she
was shut away from the meaning of what she read and even from the
comments of the man under her care, by the consideration of her own
problems. For to Laura Van Dorn it was a time of anxious doubt, of sad
retrogression, of inner anguish. In some of the books were passages she
had marked and read to her husband; and such pages calling up his dull
comprehension of their beauty, or bringing back his scoffing words, or
touching to the quick a hurt place in her heart, taxed her nerves
heavily. But during the time while she sat by the injured man's bedside,
she was glad in her heart of one thing--that she had an excuse for
avoiding the people who called.

As Grant grew stronger--as it became evident that he must go soon, the
woman's heart shrank from meeting the town, and she clung to each duty
of the man's convalescence hungrily. She knew she must face life, that
she must have some word for her friends about her tragedy. She felt that
in going away, in suing for the divorce himself, her husband had made
the break irrevocable. There was no resentment nor malice toward him in
her heart. Yet the future seemed hopelessly black and terrible to her.

The afternoon before Grant Adams was to leave the Nesbit home he was
allowed to come down stairs, and he sat with her upon the side porch,
all screened and protected by vines that led to her father's office.
Laura's finger was in a book they had been reading--it was "The Pillars
of Society." The day was one of those exquisite days in mid-June, and
after a cooling rain the air was clear and seemed to put jo