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Rh loyal and devoted helper in everything. You will do me one more favor?"

"A hundred."

"If—if he should learn what I said and did that day, will you tell him, Barry—will you tell him that it is true that I love him, and that because I love him I have dropped out of his life forever? Will you tell him, Barry?"

"Sure; I'll tell him."

"Thank you! You are the dearest friend I ever had, the most loyal and unselfish. There, good-night!"

She released his hands, put her arms up about his neck, drew down his face to hers, and kissed him.

"There," she said again, "good-night! Good-bye!"

Amazed, thrilled, speechless, Barry found himself on the porch of the house, the door closed behind him, darkness, silence and the distant lights of the city before him as he stood.

Back of the closed door, again locked and bolted, Mary Bradley resumed her preparation for flight. Emotions, whispering and thundering by turns, followed each other in quick succession across her mind. Ah, but they were right who charged her with having a romantic fondness for the minister! It was more than a fondness. It was the one blinding passion of her pinched and sunless life, and it mattered little to her now who knew it. Time was when she had hoped, in some unknown way, in some ideal social state, by means of which she had but a dim and dream-driven conception, to gratify her longing. That was when, as a modern, scouting law, flouting religion, decrying the social order, she had deluded herself with the belief that she had a moral right to seek happiness where she could find it. Born in penury, reared to toil, trained to godlessness, steeped in a philosophy that taught her that love should never be restrained by man-made barriers, she had had neither the will nor the conscience to curb or master her imperious desire. But