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370 Malleson who is contending with him for your favor?"

"I have told Barry that he must not think of me again."

"And are you then so deeply in love with Lamar?" He said it regretfully, almost reproachfully. He could not reconcile himself to the thought of a union between such a man as Lamar and such a woman as this.

She drew herself up proudly. "No!" she cried. "I am not in love with him. I hate him! I despise him!"

He stared at her in astonishment. What new mystery was this? What additional catastrophe was impending? In what fresh web of calamity was he becoming entangled?

"But why," he asked, "should Lamar be jealous of me? Why should he want to kill me? What have I done to call forth such a feeling on his part?"

"Nothing, Mr. Farrar; nothing; nothing! I have done it all."

"What have you done?"

"I told him a thing that angered him."

"What did you tell him?"

She knew, by the look in his eyes, that he would brook no evasion or denial of his demand. Nor had she, any longer, any desire either to evade or deny. They were only the big things of life that mattered now. And this was the big thing, the tremendous thing of her life, and something that he had a right to know, and that he ought to know. She flung her arms wide as if to unlock her heart and let her secret out.

"I told him that I loved you!" she cried. "I told him that I was not ashamed of it! I told him that I gloried in it!"

She looked at the minister defiantly, as though daring him to contradict her. Her face was very white, and her hands were clenched and moving. He