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194 what she must do with it. Never once did she think that this great love could be less wonderful, less sacred, less beautiful to Dick than to herself. It was to be a glorious renunciation, an ennobling for them both, and on the last night before the scows drew in to Grey Wolf she sat alone over the camp-fire in the hush that bore only the wash of the water and the cry of a far-off white owl, and thought of it with a tremulous smile on her mouth.

Dick's tread sounded up the pebbles of the beach. He had been bathing, and she saw the glow on his skin as he came round the fire and sat on the log beside her. She put her hand out in sudden fear.

"Not to-night," she said. "Oh, not to-night."

"I think it has got to be to-night, Jennifer," he said. "I must speak, and you must listen."

She shut her hands together, trying to marshal all those arguments again.

"I want to know if you have any real objection to divorce?" he said.

"N-not in the abstract."

"Never mind the abstract." She heard the amusement in his voice. "I am not making conversation just now. I want to know your personal objections to it, For that is going to come, you know."

"No! No! Oh, never. There is no reason"

"He has deserted you. And it would be easy to prove that he has ill-treated you. Very many of the States would give a divorce for less. Morally, I do not see any necessity for these things. Marriage is, and always has been, purely a social matter. But on the social side I acknowledge the necessity. I want to make arrangements for putting it in hand at once. We cannot go on so much longer, Jennifer. Don't you know that this month has tried me nearly as far as I can stand?"

There was a depth and a tenderness in his voice which she did not know. She shrank away from it, and from his eyes.

"You have been so good to me. But I must hurt you. I must tell you—there is something in life which is better than having what we want. It is giving what we have."

Her words came in little gasping sentences. Dick