Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/542

 terest disappointment, that I have ever known. It has brought to me also a deepening faith in the marvelous power of God to overrule the most untoward incidents to His glory. It has brought to me also the greatest gift that any man can have upon the side of his earthly relations,—a joy so great, so supreme, so ineffable that I cannot speak farther than to say to you that it is mine to-night; and that you look into my eyes at the happiest moment I have ever known."

There was a movement in the gallery. A tall woman, heavily veiled, with an air of unmistakable distinction about her, arose and mounted the aisle step by step to the stairway leading downward.

Desiring with all the violent impetuosity of her nature to break out with the truth that would vindicate the man she loved so hopelessly and had involved so terribly, Marien had nevertheless been true to her vow of silence. But she had brought Rollie Burbeck to this meeting, and she had kept him there. At the critical moment she had sent him down to stand beside his mother, until the young man's clay-like soul at last had fluxed and fused into the moulding of a man. Having seen the mischief she had wrought undone, so far as anything done ever is undone, she was leaving now, when the minister had begun to speak of what she could not bear to hear.

Hampstead's gaze watched the receding figure, and a poignant regret for her smote in upon him in the midst of all his joy.

Desperately, with that enormous resolution of which she was capable, Marien Dounay was stepping undemonstratively out of his life. But as she went, he knew that the verdict pronounced upon him by the court was one now pronounced upon her. All through life she would be held to answer for the love she had slain for the sake of her ambition.