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232 It made her interlace her ringers with nervous anxiety, but it set a fire in her eyes.

'That time is ending," said Andrew. "You are about to be married."

"And after that you will never look at me again, never think of me again?"

"I hope not," he answered. "I strongly hope not. I shall make myself busy with that purpose."

"But why? Is a marriage a blot or a stain?"

"It is a barrier," he answered.

"Even to thoughts? Even to friendship?"

"Yes."

A very strange thing happened in the excited mind of Anne Withero. It seemed to her that Charles Merchant sat, a filmy ghost, beside this tattered fugitive. He was speaking the same words that Andrew spoke, but his voice and his manner were to Andrew Lanning what moonshine is to sunlight. She had looked upon marriage simply as an acquisition, a gain, an inevitable event toward which all womankind must move. And now a new point of view was opened to her, and she saw marriage as a bitter loss, a great gain and a great sacrifice, a chance for joy and a certainty for aching sorrow, an inevitable trial by fire to which all womankind moves. She had been thinking of Charles Merchant as a social asset; she began to think of him now as a possessing force. Anne Withero possessed by Charlie Merchant! A faded smile came and went on her lips.

"What you have told me," she said, "means more than you may think to me. Have you come all this distance to tell me?"

"All this distance to talk?" he said. He seemed to sit back and wonder. "Have I traveled four days?" he