Only an Episode

IN TWO PARTS. PART ONE.

BIRTH, breeding, and inclination had fitted Larrie Norman for the complex civilization of Eastern cities. Fate, in the shape of a weak lung, had placed him on a cattle ranch in the West. When the doctors had given a verdict of perpetual banishment, he had gone into exile alone, and the woman he loved married another man. Loving her too well to ask her to follow him, Larrie had never known if she loved him well enough to do so, and he told himself that he lived very well without her, as men who lose a leg or an arm manage to live and be happy without forgetting the loss.

For seven years he lived in the solitude of northern California, with a Chinese cook, an Indian half-breed, and one other, — a man from the East, like himself, who was called John; and though Larrie wrote home amusing letters concerning his life as a ranchman, the idiosyncrasies of the Chinese cook and the half-breed, he never mentioned John.

One spring, at the end of seven years, his sister Nora wrote that she was coming to spend a month with him. It was characteristic of her not to ask permission or question convenience, but to state simply that she was coming, and that she should bring her ward, Evelyn Winsor, with her. Larrie accepted the invasion as he accepted most things, with a shrug and a smile and a sigh. But the morning after their arrival, as he watched his guests on the piazza steps, there was a whimsical twist to his smile. He was not troubled by their arrival, but he was wondering what he should do with them, or they with him.

A bold, immense landscape lay at their feet, other men’s horizons were their near distances, and great tracts of country lay in sunlight and shadow, while a band of purple cloud trailed showers over woods and meadows twenty miles away. In all these vast sunlit spaces there was no softening haze; for it was a day when one seemed to see the edge of the world, and beyond. Down in the hollow, near the lake, the blackbirds were singing riotously, but through the sound of their joy came the yearning call of the mourning dove. Two peacocks strutted daintily on the short grass in front of the house, and pecked food from the ground with disdainful grace. Almost hidden by the eucalyptus trees, John sat with his back to the house, mending a saddle, while Larrie lounged on the porch, pulling the collie’s ears and watching his guests.

His sister Nora was an ugly woman. Her face was worn, and the pitiless sunlight showed every graceless line. But in the dark eyes, that were fixed on the mountain, twenty miles away, across the lake, a deep and hungry nature stood revealed as some naked thing; for she was one of those who, asking much, give more, and hold out empty hands at the last. To her had been given a sense of the thrill and the passion of life, but her own life held little of either; and from the day in which she seemed to hear the sum of the world’s misery in the sound of one woman’s voice, she had followed the sound. It had not led her to city charities, as embodied in mothers’ meetings or home libraries, and boys’ clubs, but beyond, — into streets where Charity holds her skirts aside, into lives where she stands helpless and abashed, into the grand, aching, sinning, struggling heart of humanity that is the subterranean life of great cities. Because the heart struggled, she forbore to blame, which made her wise and merciful. Because the heart ached, she understood and loved it, which made her patient and tender. But she was not fashioned for self-sacrifice, and would cease to want, passionately and personally, when she died, for which reasons the hands which gave so royally were always empty, and the self that had been thrust aside grew troublesome from time to time, and demanded impossible things. Each spring she heard the winds of the world calling her, as they swept by.

The girl who sat beside her was beautiful, with the fair, spiritual, haunting beauty that belongs to the dawn of things. Of pain and evil she knew nothing, for she was young, and her temperament turned to the lovely and happy side of life as a flower turns to the sun. The depths of her heart were as yet unsounded, and the metal of her nature untried.

Watching her, Larrie asked himself if her beauty could survive the heat and passion of noon, and wondered if any woman could be what she looked; he almost dreaded to hear her speak, and was sometimes sorry when she did. As a stray breeze blew a branch of a rose vine across her face, she put up her hand to detain it, and smiled at him.

“May I pick it? ” she asked.

He did not answer at once. It sometimes took him several minutes to recover from the bewildering effects of her smile, and this was one of the times.

“ Of course; you can have all you want,” he said at last.

Nora withdrew her eyes from the mountains, and looked at the silent man who sat apart, mending a saddle.

“Who is that? ” she asked.

“That is John.”

“And who is John? ”

“John.” Larrie paused. “Who is he, to be sure ? ” he continued lazily, as he stroked the collie’s ears. “He does most of my hard work, and much of my dangerous work, for one dollar and a half a day.”

“Then he is your hired man,” said Evelyn, busy with the rose vine.

Larrie smiled, an odd, repressed little smile. “Yes, I suppose we may call him that.”

“ Why did you never write me about him? ” questioned Nora, who had been struck by the smile.

Larrie’s far-seeing gray eyes seemed to be looking into great distances. As a matter of fact he was only looking at the man working under the eucalyptus trees, but Nora wondered if her brother were not learning to live up to his eyes.

“I have written you about him,” he said finally.

“When?”

“You remember the man who nursed me through smallpox, when I first came out here ? ”

“Who died afterward of the same disease? ”

“He did not die.”

“You wrote me he was dying.”

“He got well.”

“ And that is he ? ”

“That is he.”

Larrie was the only person in the world whom Nora loved, and her worn face was suddenly brilliant with intensity of feeling. “ I must speak to him, ” she said.

“I did n’t know that you had had smallpox! ” exclaimed Evelyn. “How queer that it did n’t mark you! ”

Larrie looked up at the exquisite face. “Decidedly, ” he thought, “it is a pity that she speaks.”

Nora’s eyes were on her brother. “Has he been with you all these seven years ? ”

“Yes.”

“And you never wrote me of him,”

“You have not lost your unfeminine power of stating a fact correctly.” Larrie spoke in banter, but there was a sudden reserve in his eyes.

“ I must speak to him, ” said Nora again.

Larrie hesitated perceptibly; then he raised his voice. “John, I wish you would come here for a moment, ” he called.

“I am busy,” answered the hired man.

Nora smiled. “You don’t seem to have him in very good training, ” she remarked.

“I want you very much,” called Larrie, with mock plaintiveness.

“You will have to wait,” was the answer.

Larrie rose, and strolled over to the eucalyptus trees. After a brief and inaudible conversation he came back with John at his side.

Nora rose to meet a pair of dark, compelling eyes on a direct level with her own. The heavily bearded face of the man was bronzed as an Indian’s, marked from smallpox, and deeply and strangely lined. The broad forehead might have been of furrowed granite, though he was young, and there was neither gray in his hair nor stoop to his powerful shoulders.

These things Nora realized while the two men stood before her, and Larrie said simply, “This is my sister, John.”

She held out her hand to him. “You saved my brother’s life, seven years ago, at the risk of your own, ” she said, “and so — I wished to speak with you.”

“The risk was less than the gain,” answered John quietly. The hand that met hers was hard and stiff. It was the hand that belongs to all children of toil, and Nora had felt many such, in the fields and the slums and the prisons. The two pairs of dark eyes seemed to exchange a challenge, but suddenly those of the man became remote, impassive, expressionless, as if at will. Nora’s grasp loosened, and his hand dropped.

Evelyn, with an armful of white roses, was leaning on the porch railing, when John looked up and saw her.

“My cousin, Miss Winsor,” explained Larrie, as if he were in a drawing-room. “Evelyn, this is John, my most unprofitable servant and belligerent friend, who bullies me and conquers me, and has reduced my will power to such an extent that I no longer protest.” As he spoke he put his hand on John’s shoulder, and Nora knew he loved him.

John, with his hat in his hand, continued to look at Evelyn; and though she did not offer him her hand, she smiled, and asked if he would help her to break a rebellious rose branch. He did so without speaking, and then went back to the eucalyptus trees, to sit with his back to them, and work on the saddle as before.

There was a silence while Larrie sat on the steps beside his sister and threw dry bread to the peacocks.

“Why did n’t you tell me that he was a gentleman ? ” asked Nora at last.

“ Is that important ? ”

There was another silence. Nora wondered why a gentleman should live in the wilderness, to round up cattle and build fences for one dollar and a half a day. Larrie knew her thought; but he said nothing, and continued to throw bread to the peacocks.

During the next few days life at the ranch fell back into its well-worn channels, and Larrie adjusted himself to the advent of feminine influence with what some friend had called his “fatal adaptability. ” It was a life in which a man must mend his own doorstep and go in search of his dinners with a gun, and Larrie did these things with the grace and distinction that had been his in the days when he led Newport cotillions and presided over select supper parties at Delmonico’s. If he missed the old life, he never said so. To Evelyn he was merely a courteous gentleman masquerading in cowhides and sombrero. It was Nora who saw the sadness behind the mirth in his gray eyes, just as it was Nora who heard the mourning dove while Evelyn listened to the blackbirds.

After a day or so, Larrie felt it to be in the natural course of events that a sister should mend his shirts, and a flower-like girl drift in and out of his rough dwelling, bringing sunshine to dark corners and flowers to bare ones. Nora’s spirits rose joyously in the free, careless life; for she could come and go, and dare and do, as in the glad and somewhat mad days of her girlhood. There was a horse for her to ride, which horse lived in a pasture, and had burs in his mane and tail. He was also the possessor of a great variety of paces, some of them wholly original and exercised without discrimination. But Nora was as little troubled by these things as she was by the broken roads and the perilous trails that led her over the lower spur of a great mountain range. She knew again her old, wild love of roaming, and would often go out alone, through saffron-tinted dawns, to come home with the dusk, and the pallor of twilight clouds, and the glint of the first star.

One day she met John, who was riding a fierce little mustang to the rounding up of a stray bull. He asked her to station herself at a certain gate, and prevent the animal’s escape. It had not occurred to him that she might be afraid. When the bull — who was young and much bewildered — charged for a gap in the fence, Nora urged her horse to a gallop, and felt the intoxication of swift motion and possible danger. As she headed off the creature’s desperate bid for freedom, John hastened to her assistance, and meeting his eyes she laughed, — a glad, reckless laugh.

His look, with its grave question, haunted her consciousness for the rest of the day, and was with her in the evening when she told Larrie of the adventure. Her brother thought, as he listened to her, that a man might well find her eyes as bewildering as Evelyn’s smile, in a different way. Evelyn’s dawnlike presence was a refreshment to his eyes and heart. While Nora rode in perilous places and rounded up cattle, Evelyn picked flowers and played with the collie dogs; but he noticed that she never played with those that were old and ugly, and finally asked himself if she were anything but an exquisite egotism.

For one week John, at great inconvenience to himself, kept away from the guests ; but at the expiration of that time came news of the supposed discovery of some lost cattle, and as those particular cattle had been under Larrie’s charge, he only could identify them.

“It will take me three or four days to get there and back, ” he said.

“Then we shall be alone with John all the time, and he will have to speak to us! ” exclaimed Evelyn.

“You may settle that for yourselves,”was Larrie’s answer.

“I think there’s a mystery about John, ” continued Evelyn, when she and Nora were left alone.

“Do you? ” asked Nora quietly.

They were out on the tiny rose-covered porch. Evelyn embroidered violets on a table doily, while Nora lounged at full length on a rough bench.

“Why don’t you call him now, and perhaps you can find it out, ” she added, as John was seen coming up the hill with a coil of rope over his shoulder.

Evelyn looked out through the vines.

“ I should like to, ” she said, “ but I do not dare. Why don’t you call him? ”

Nora was silent.

“Why don’t you call him?” said Evelyn again.

John passed before the house without raising his head, but as he was about to disappear Nora rose and stood on the steps. “Where are you going? ”

He paused with evident reluctance. “Is there anything you or Miss Winsor would like to have me do for you ? ”

“Yes, ” said Nora, with mirth in her eyes.

“What is it? ”

“We should like you to sit on the porch with us.”

John shifted the coil of rope to his other shoulder. “Why?” he asked.

Nora smiled, “Before you come we must know your name, ” she continued.

“My name,” he replied slowly, — “my name is John.”

“But we cannot call you that.”

“Why not? ”

“I think you know as well as I.”

The words were a fairly flung challenge, and a slight pause followed them. The man’s brown, scarred face was motionless while he weighed the chances, and Nora stood on the step and waited.

Suddenly she laughed, — a low, audacious laugh. In his barren life women were not wont to laugh so, and Nora seemed to be daring him. He weighed the chances a little longer, and then he answered her.

“My name is John Peters,” he said.

Her face was vivid with a strange power, a subtle witchery, and something of recklessness. John Peters seemed to know her as a part of himself; but his eyes fell upon Evelyn, who came out of the shadow of the rose vine, and smiled at him silently. In her dawnlike face, with its haunting, spiritual beauty, there was nothing that was, or ever could be, of himself; but he felt as one who comes upon a shrine in the desert, and stood at the foot of the steps, bareheaded in the sunshine, looking up at her.

“Won’t you come in?” she said. And John Peters came.

That afternoon he met Larrie in the tool-house. “I thought I would let you know before you went away that I am going to tell them,” he said.

Larrie, who was astride of a table, battering crooked nails into straight ones, laid down his hammer slowly, and looked at John. “ Don’t be a fool,” he cautioned.

“That,” said John, “is precisely what I intend being.”

He leaned against the doorpost, a swarthy, square-shouldered, picturesque figure, with eyes that had suddenly grown desperate.

“I suppose you have thought it over ? ”

“ I have thought.”

“Think again.”

John picked up some filings, and balanced them carelessly in his coarse hand. “I was with your sister and Miss Winsor this morning, ” he continued. “I cannot be with them again unless they know. I have weighed the risk and the loss and the gain. The loss seems ” — He tossed the filings in the air. “And the gain, the universe — for an hour. The risk is mine only, and I choose to take it.”

Larrie pounded the table gently, while he kept his eyes on John’s face. “I am sorry,” he said. “I think it is a mistake.”

Through the doorway Evelyn could be seen feeding the peacocks.

“I am sure that Nora can be trusted,” he continued slowly. “I don’t know about — the other one.”

John looked out through the doorway. “A man might trust her with his soul, ” he said.

“ Doubtless. A man might trust some women with his soul rather than his secret.” There was a silence before he added: “You may do as you like about Nora; she is fearless and true, and knows her world. But Evelyn is different: she is in my sister’s charge, and to my sister must be left the decision of telling her. ”

John’s face stiffened. “She is your guest,” he said shortly, “and if you insist ” —

“I am afraid I must, John.” Larrie’s tone was quiet, but John turned away in anger.

He found Nora in the pasture. She had just caught her horse, and was preparing to saddle him, but paused, with her hand on his mane, when John stood before her.

“What is it? ” she asked.

He moistened his lips before speaking. “There is something I want you to know,” he said.

Nora waited. “I thought so,” her eyes said gravely.

“When I have told you, you may not wish to see me again as you have seen me this morning.”

She smiled, and, in the silence that followed, waited quietly for him to speak. She was used to waiting. John realized that the smile was beautiful, — patient and wise and womanly. It was the smile that is born of knowledge and suffering.

“There are some women who might be afraid of what I am going to tell you, ” he said.

“I shall not be afraid,” she answered .

“Before you admit me to your companionship and confidence, I want you to know that I am ” — He paused, and moistened his lips again. “There is, after all, only one way of saying it,” he continued, with unwavering eyes on hers. “It may sound melodramatic, though it is nothing but a grim commonplace to me. I am a convict.”

If he had expected her face to change, he was disappointed.

“I thought it was something like that,” she said quietly. “Have you served your term ? ”

“No, I slipped it, — I escaped. My cap was found in a river, below the rapids — where I had been killed on the rocks — you understand ? ”

“And then ? ”

“Then I grew a heard and worked my way West. I meant to ship for Australia, but I met your brother.”

“Yes? ”

“We fought death with each other and the smallpox. One does not forget those hours.”

“You risked it, and told him what you have told me ? ”

“Yes.”

“And now you are risking it again.”

“I think not.”

There was a silence, and Nora stood looking at him with deeply questioning eyes. In his face she read the story of lost hopes, of useless power, of blunted sensibilities, of stunted aims; and when she had read these things, the eyes questioned deeper still, till it seemed as if her very soul were demanding his secret. He wondered if she saw what was beyond the lost hope or wasted power, and he stood motionless, willing that she should see, if she could.

At last he spoke. “Do you know it all ? ” he asked.

“I am not sure,” she answered.

The moment of revelation was over, and the trained stolidity came back to his face. “You have not given me my answer. ”

Nora smiled.

“ Is that the answer ? ”

“Yes, and this.”

She held out her hand, and he took it without emotion, though there had been an instant when his face seemed about to quiver with feeling.

“ There is one more thing ” — he began.

“Yes?”

“I want Miss Winsor to know.”

Nora hesitated. “I think not, ” she said.

“ Why not ? ”

“It would be hard to explain, for I think you do not understand her. ”

“No! What am I, that I should understand her ? What am I ? ” A deathless, untamed misery leaped into his eyes for an instant, and was gone, but not before Nora had seen.

She did not ride that day, but went in search of Larrie instead, and found him smoking a pipe on the steps. Without dropping his eyes from the distant hills, he moved silently to make room for her beside him; and she thought that he looked tired and worn under his tan, but said nothing of it, knowing his health to be a forbidden subject,

“Is everything ready for the journey? ” she asked.

“I think so.”

“The Chinaman says there is fever in the marshes beyond the mountain, ” she continued, “so I slipped a box of quinine into the coffeepot. Don’t forget it, or boil it with the coffee.”

“I will endeavor not to.”

“And I put in an extra pair of woolen socks,— some that I bought for a Klondike miner who was arrested for bigamy before setting out on his journey.”

“Thank you. Anything else? ”

“I can’t think of anything now.”

Larrie suspected that she had seen John, and admired her for a self-restraint that was almost manly; but at last he took his pipe from his mouth, and looked at her.

“Yes,” said Nora, as if he had spoken.

“Are you going to tell Evelyn? ”

“No.”

He put back his pipe, and looked at the mountains again.

“You are an eminently satisfactory person,” he said. “I wish that you had come out here to stay. Why do you not tell Evelyn ? ”

“ She would either be frightened and go home, and run him into danger, or ” —

“Yes? ”

“Or fall in love with him.”

Larrie whistled softly. “I don’t know which would be more inconvenient, ” he said, “but I rather think she would run away. She would be afraid of a possibly guilty man.”

“No, she would not imagine him guilty. Godfrey Landless and Harry Wingfield and Jack Cardew were not guilty. ”

“And who are Godfrey Landless and Harry Wingfield and Jack Cardew?”

“They are heroes of popular novels, — all of them convicts, inevitably innocent, and much maligned at the hands of fate. Evelyn reads novels.”

Larrie looked at his sister with some curiosity. “Don’t you like Evelyn? ” he asked.

“We are very different,” she answered,— “even more different than we look.”

“She seems to me an exquisite child.”

“She is one.” Nora’s voice and face were neutral. “Did he ever tell you he was innocent ? ” she asked, changing her subject, but not her tone.

“I prevented him from telling me everything. The less I knew, the better I could protect him. Besides which, his guilt or innocence did not seem important, so far as I was concerned. ”

Nora smiled upon Larrie approvingly. “I like you,” she said. “You understand things. I think you do better out here with a weak chest than in New York with a strong one.”

He smiled back at her as he rose. “It may be a blessing in disguise,” he answered. “It seems a pity that one’s blessings should come so very much disguised.”

That night, at bedtime, Evelyn came to Nora’s room with a confession. She was shivering, and Nora wrapped her in a brown shawl, thinking that she would never have submitted to anything so unbecoming unless the confession were serious. In the candlelight, Evelyn’s face emerged from the dark folds more exquisitely fair and appealing than usual, as she told how she had been behind the fence in the pasture and heard John’s confession.

“I could have got away,” she went on hurriedly, as if to escape rebuke.

“If I pretend I could n’t, it will only he worse for me afterward. But you must never, never tell, I could not bear to have any one know. It is bad enough to know, myself, for wrongdoing spoils all my ” — she hesitated, in search of a word — “my feelings, ” she added vaguely. “You see, one has an ideal of one’s self; and when one does something wrong it breaks it up, just as a dropped stone breaks up still water, and one can’t be happy till the water is still again. Did you ever feel that way ? ”

“I don’t think that I ever did.”

“Perhaps you are not as sensitive about wrongdoing as I am.”

“Perhaps not. I have often done wrong. ”

“I suppose you must have become blunted, being with prisoners and wicked people so much.”

Nora smiled. “I suppose that I must have,” she said.

Evelyn’s serenity was partially restored, and the face above the brown shawl was like a spiritualized flower.

“ It must be dreadful to be blunted, ” she said. “Perhaps you don’t think that what I did was very bad ? ”

“ I should be very sorry to have done it,” answered Nora gravely, “and I am very sorry that you know.”

“You won’t ever tell him, Nora? Oh, promise you won’t tell him, or any one! You know you did promise before I confessed. I should die to have him know.”

“I shall not tell,” said Nora.

“I could n’t bear to have any one know and think ill of me! ” continued Evelyn, with tears in her eyes. “No one ever did think ill of me, and I could n’t bear it.”

“I think you had better go to bed, Evelyn. I have said that I would not tell.”

“I know, but I can’t help being afraid, because it would be so dreadful if you did.” She paused by the door. “But I feel much better now that I have confessed to some one, ” she added.

“Is n’t it sad and terrible about poor John Peters? ”

“Perhaps he deserved it,” said Nora, and Evelyn turned to her with deep reproach.

“ How can you be so suspicious! ” she exclaimed. “Think how good he is to every one, and how he saved Larrie’s life. ”

Nora, sitting in the shadow, smiled.

Larrie returned from his journey one late afternoon, after nearly a week’s absence. There was great joy among the collies, and resultant agitation in the barnyard, but no other sign of life till he came to the front of the house and found Nora sitting on the steps, almost as he had left her.

She rose to meet him, and kissed him quietly. “ How well you look ! ” she said. “Did you find both heifers and the bull calf ? ”

“Yes, everything went well. But what have you been doing to tire yourself? ”

“I am not tired.”

“I thought you looked so. It must be the twilight.”

“I think that it must be. Sit down here, Larrie; you can’t do any work to-night. ”

“Where is John? ” he asked.

“He has taken Evelyn out on the lake.”

“I am glad of that,” said Larrie. “She will do him good.”

Nora did not reply. She sat with her head against the piazza railing, and her strong, finely shaped hands folded loosely on her knees.

“How nice it is to be at home again! ” continued Larrie, lighting his pipe, and proceeding to smoke it in great content. “Tell me the news.”

Nora considered. “The white hen has hatched her eggs at last, ” she said, “and yesterday morning one of the peacocks was found torn to pieces. John Peters says a fox must have got him. The days have been rather long. The roses have gone, as you see, and the mourning dove is more hopeless than ever. I think that is all the news. John Peters works all day, and sits with us in the evening. He does not talk much. I think that part of him died long ago; but I am not sure. For his sake, I hope that it is so.”

“You are rather enigmatic, Nora, but I dare say I shall understand you in time.”

“I dare say that you will. Here he comes now. I mean Mr. Peters and Evelyn. ”

The days that followed were laden with growing significance. There was a great and thoughtful stillness in the sky, and a pause, as of expectancy, on the earth. Huge clouds brooded motionless through long hours over lake and mountain, and it was only in the marshes, where the blackbirds sang, that the world was mad with spring.

From gray dawn to the setting of the sun, Larrie and John worked in the fields, while Nora rode, or sat with idle hands, looking at the mountain, and Evelyn played with books and flowers. In the late afternoon she would join Nora on the steps, and look at the mountain with eyes veiled like the spring skies, while she waited for John, who came up from his day of toil to take her on the lake. One evening, as he stood in silence before her, Nora thought of the Catholic before his shrine.

The next day was Sunday, and the great calm of nature was unchanged, save for deepening beauty as it neared the passion of climax and change. But Nora was troubled.

She repeated the line over and over, but it brought her no peace; for John had not joined the little party at the ranch house, and lay on his back under the eucalyptus trees, with his hat pulled over his eyes, and it was the first day on which Evelyn had complained of the cry of the mourning dove.

Nora did not wonder of what John was thinking, or with what he was battling, for she knew the one as well as the other, and at last she moved to the brow of the hill, and sat on the ground beside him.

He raised himself when he saw her, and pushed back his hat; but she did not glance at him. When she spoke, her voice was vibrant with depth upon depth of knowledge and feeling.

“Look out through the trees,” she said, “and see the great shadow on the mountain. It is like a thought of God. ”

He turned his face to her, and she met his eyes. It seemed to her that they were haunted eyes. “ Why do you say that to me ? ” he asked.

She did not answer him at once, but looked in silence at the loitering clouds, the drifting purple of their shadows, and the wide pause in the earth and sky.

“ I have made a mistake, ” she said at last. “I thought that part of you had died. I was wrong, for it was only numbed, and now you are finding it out. I think that we had better go away. ”

John pulled the hat over his eyes again.

“If I could hurt her,” he urged finally, his voice low and halting, “if it could bring her an hour’s pain — but it could not, and ” — he raised his head to look at Nora with wondering humility— “for some reason I think she likes to be with me.”

“And if she should grow to like it too well ? ”

But John only smiled gravely, almost pityingly, as we smile at the question of a child.

“And as far as you only are concerned, are you willing to pay the price ? ” she persisted.

“It will be a big price,” he said, “but I will pay.” Then he laughed shortly. “Some hours are worth a life, ” he added, in a different tone. “I will pay for the hour with the life. When one has been maimed and starved and stunted, who would not look in at the gates of heaven? ”

Nora’s eyes met his, and in a moment of silence they exchanged a glance of deep recognition.

“You would do the same,” he protested earnestly.

“Yes,” said Nora, — “yes. But for me there is not even an hour to win.” She spoke as he had spoken, with a sort of heedless madness, and John rose. “So you have chosen? ” she said.

“Yes.” He stood above her, strong and reckless and resolute.

Nora rose also, and stood beside him. The two pairs of dark eyes, so nearly on a level, met again. Her glance was unfathomable, and this time it bewildered and disturbed him. Suddenly she laughed, very low.

“John Peters,” she said, “I think you are very much of a fool.”

Eugenia Brooks Frothingham.

(To be continued.)