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 brave Mona," said Christian. And he put her arms about his neck.

The girl lifted her face to his in the darkness. "That's true," she said. "Ah, how often in the early days did I gaze into the face of my fatherless little one, and feel a touch of awe in the presence of the mute soul that lay behind the speechless baby face, and wonder if some power above had told it something that its mother must needs hide from it, and if, when it spoke, it would reproach me with its own shame, or pity me for mine."

Christian smoothed her hand tenderly. "If the child suffered," he said, "before her race of life began, let it be mine henceforth to make it up to her with all that love can yet do."

"And when I heard its cry," said Mona, "its strange, pitiful cry as it awoke from that mystery, a baby's troubled dream, and looked into its red startled eyes and into its little face, all liquid grief, and said, 'It's only a dream, darling,' the thought has sometimes stolen up to my heart that perhaps some evil spirit had whispered to it the story of its shame—for what else had it to cry about so bitterly?"

Christian kissed her again, a great gulp in his throat. "Yes," he said, "in the eyes of men we may have wronged the child, but in the eternal world, when these few painful years are as a span, she will be ours indeed, and God will not ask by right of what symbol we claim her."

They had walked to the gate.

"Wait!" said Mona, and ran toward the door.

Christian thought she had gone to prepare her mother,