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 her hands, "whose lives are linked with ours. The face of your wife I saw last night will forever haunt me with its pathos. I've seen your children once—so like you, and yet so like her."

"Even so. Life has no meaning now except that you are mine and I am yours."

"But may you not be mine in a nobler way than the cheap surrender to our senses? We can love and suffer and wait. You love me. It is enough."

"But, Kate, my dear, there can be no middle course between right and wrong, a lie and the truth."

She fixed on him an intense look.

"Have you told her?"

"Yes, and we have separated as man and wife. She leaves for Florida for the winter. She has agreed at my request to secure a divorce, and you and I will marry under the new forms of Social freedom. Our union will be a prophecy of the revolution that shall redeem society."

"You are doing a great wrong," she protested, her full red lips drawn with pain. "When I think of your wife and children, of her tears and reproaches, I am sick with fear."

"Perfect love will cast out fear. The world is large. The soul is large. Lift up your head and be yourself. You said to me in this room once you were not afraid."

"Yes; I had not kissed you then, or felt the bliss and agony of your strong arms about me. Now,