The Rose in the Ring/Part 2/Chapter 9

did not seek the warrant for Grand's arrest. He remained in the Portman house until the middle of the afternoon, vastly exercised by the fainting spell that had come over Christine. The household was considerably upset by the occurrences of the morning; old Mr. Portman was the only person about the place who appeared to be in ignorance of impending peril and disaster. He went out for his drive at two, but was not accompanied by his daughter, a defection which surprised and irritated him not a little.

Christine was herself again in a little while. She stayed in her room, attended by the entertaining Miss Noakes, who struggled manfully, so to speak, in her efforts to shatter the depression that surrounded the young girl like a blank wall.

Downstairs Mary Braddock listened to David's earnest eager plea for an immediate marriage. Now that Braddock had promised to leave at once for the far West, never to return, it seemed to David that all of their problems were solved. She had told him that her husband was to depart by the midnight train, and that it was her intention to go with him to the depot. David begged her to take him along with her, but she was firm in her determination to go alone. Braddock had made it a condition, and she could not break faith with him.

Shortly after the noon hour she drove up town to the bank. On her return she informed David that she had drawn out a sum of money to be delivered to Braddock before the train pulled out. She would not say how much she had drawn, except that it was sufficient to start the man out afresh in the world, and to keep him comfortable for a long time to come, if he should adhere to his decision to eschew drink and cards for the remainder of his life.

"Where is he going, Mrs. Braddock?"

She shook her head. "I will not tell you that, David. Only he and I are to know."

"And you are to send him money from time to time?"

"No, I am not to send him a penny."

"He goes to-night—positively?"

"He goes to-night, positively."

"And he refuses to see Christine?"

"Why should he see her?"

"Well, I don't know," said he dubiously. "It seems rather hard, don't you think?"

"Yes. He worships her, David. Yes, it is hard. He is going in this way because it makes it easier—for both of them, he says. You see, David, he is doing it for her sake, not for his own. If he were to do things just now for his own sake, he would kill Grand instead of running away from him."

"He's a good deal of a man, after all, Mrs. Braddock."

"A good deal of a man," she repeated.

"He wishes Christine to be my wife. He told you so, but she won't consent until you tell her that it is all right. It's silly of her. I'm never going to give her up, and she knows it."

She faced him suddenly. "You ask me why the marriage cannot take place to-morrow, David. Would you be just as eager to have it take place if her father decided to change his mind and remain here, with all the consequences such an act might create?"

"Certainly," he replied promptly.

"You do not forget what he is, what he has been, what he may yet become?"

"That has nothing to do with it. I love Christine."

"Would you be willing to stand at his side, the husband of his daughter, and say, 'I am content to be called your son'—would you?"

David stared hard at the floor for a moment. "I think that is rather an unfair question, Mrs. Braddock, when we stop to recall the fact that both you and Christine have denied him for years. I will call myself his son when you call him husband and Christine speaks of him as father—to the world. You can hardly expect me to be proud of what you are ashamed to own."

She bowed her head in sudden humility. "I was wrong," she said. "I deserve the rebuke."

"I have hurt you. Forgive me."

She placed her hand on his. He observed that it was as cold as ice. "While it is true that we have denied him, my dear David, nevertheless we do belong to him. She is his daughter. That is what I am trying to make plain to you."

"If she chooses to call herself his daughter, I am perfectly content to call myself his son."

"I wanted to hear you say that, David. You must take her as Thomas Braddock's daughter, quite as much as you do as Albert Portman's granddaughter."

"I am not deceiving myself," he said with a smile.

"Then I am ready to give my consent to an immediate marriage," she said. For the first time since their interview began she spoke hurriedly. A feverish light came into her eyes, burning bright and dry.

He sprang to his feet, triumphant. "Come with me to her! She will name the day if you—"

"I shall name the day, David," she said evenly. "It must be to-night,—this very night,—before her father goes away."

"Are you in earnest?" he cried, scarcely believing that he heard aright.

"She loves you with all her soul, and you love her. You are her protector, the stone wall between her and all the unkind things of life. She needs you now. Tomorrow may bring the hour of trial. It is best that she should have you to lean upon. It must be to-night. Come; we will go to her. It is nearly three o'clock. There is much to be done between now and the time that your train starts for Richmond. I want her to be in Jenison Hall to-morrow."

Together they went to Christine. Half an hour later he hurried away from the house, a dozen imperative duties to be performed between that time and seven o'clock. He went with a joyous spirit, a leaping heart, and with the will to accomplish all that was required of him in that short space of time.

At seven Christine and he were to be married in the huge, old-fashioned drawing-room; at eight-thirty they would be on board the train, bound for Jenison Hall. He was to take her away with him, far from all the ugly possibilities that crept up from all sides to threaten her. Mary Braddock refrained from telling Christine even so much as she had told David concerning the plans of her husband. The girl was allowed to believe that the man was already on his way to the far West. There was a rather trying scene when Christine learned that it would be impossible for her to see her father. She broke down and wept, crying out bitterly that she might have been able to comfort him if she had been given the opportunity. It was with some difficulty and the exercise of considerable patience that her mother convinced her that they had acted for the best.

"Some day I shall go to see him, mother," she had said with a resoluteness that brought a strange gleam to the eyes of the older woman. "I am sorry for him. He needs some one to love him. I am sure he is not so wicked as—"

"You must be guided by what David says, my child. Remember that you will have more than yourself to consider," was the evasive remark of Mary Braddock.

Brooks was sent off with a letter to Dr. Browne, the rector, requesting him to conduct the marriage ceremony. Maid-servants packed Christine's trunks, all enjoined to secrecy. Ruby Noakes and old Joey attended to a few of the many preparations that were being hurried through with such nervous haste.

All through the long afternoon Mary Braddock lived under the most intense strain of suspense and apprehension. Uppermost in her mind was the question: had he succeeded in eluding the watchers who were on his trail?

At four o'clock she went to her father, prepared to tell him all that had transpired during the past thirty-six hours. She held nothing back from the old man, not even Braddock's gruesome design. They were closeted together for more than an hour. That which passed between father and daughter went no farther than the walls of the secluded little room that he called his study. She came forth from the trying interview with her head high and her heart low.

The old man's last tremulous words to her were these: "Well, Mary, God shows all of us the way. Sometimes the way is hard, but we reach the end if we look neither to the right nor the left,—nor behind. What you have just told me is terrible. Is it the only way?"

"Yes, it is the only way."

He bowed his head and said no more. She kissed his gray hair and passed out from the room, closing the door gently behind her.

David and Christine were married at seven o'clock. The shadow which hung over the household, the grievous exigency which made haste so imperative, did much toward suppressing the joy and gladness that under other conditions would have filled the house and the hearts of all therein. Mr. Portman, gray-faced and taciturn, gave the bride in marriage. There were but three witnesses outside of the family. Joey Noakes and Ruby were there and a single college friend to whom David had gone in the stress of necessity.

Mother and daughter said their farewells in private. Christine sobbed in her mother's arms, imploring her to come away with them at once, to be happy forever. Mary Braddock's eyes were dry and burning, her hands were cold, her heart like ice.

"I will come some time, my darling, but—not now. You must make your home before I come to see you in it. I shall go abroad, as I told you this afternoon. Father agrees with me that it is the thing to do under the circumstances. When I return, my child, I will come to see you in Jenison Hall. You will be its true mistress by that time. You will have discovered the true happiness of life. Until then, my darling, you will not have lived. Even I found joy and happiness in their fullest estate before I came to know bitterness and unrest. You are to be very, very happy. I will come to you in the midst of it all."

After they were gone and the lights were out Mary Braddock, wide-eyed and tense, stole down to the stables and waited for the father of the bride. She was there a long while ahead of the appointed time—hours, it seemed to her.

He came at last, slinking up from the mouth of the alley where a single street-light spread a dim glow in which he resolved himself for a moment in transit, only to be blotted out again as if by some magic process. With narrowed, anxious eyes and alert ears she waited, standing there in the half-open door of the carriage-house. Suddenly he grew up out of the darkness, almost at her side.

"Tom," she cried out softly.

He came straight to her. His eyes, used to the darkness and made keen by the ever-present sense of danger, had seen the faintly white splotch in the night that marked her face for him. He had seen and had waited to make sure that it was she who stood there peering forth.

"Well, I'm here," he said in a hoarse, restrained whisper. "Have you heard what's happened?"

"They are not pursuing you? What is it, Tom?"

"Grand has been murdered, Mary!"

For a full minute they stood as motionless as statues, he listening for the footstep that had been in his ears for days, she stunned by the appalling news. Her voice was shrill with agony when she finally broke the silence—agony, despair, horror, all combined in one bitter cry.

"You promised me you wouldn't do that!"

"Sh! Be careful," he whispered, coming close to her side. "I didn't do it, Mary,—so help me, I didn't! Wait! Listen to me! I'm telling you the truth." She had fallen back against the wall of the building. Her breathing was quick, as if horror was strangling her. "They caught the murderers,—a couple of gamblers at Broadso's, I heard. I didn't hear much about it. The newsboys were shouting it over in Broadway half an hour ago. I bought a paper, but it gave no details,—except that he is dead."

"He is dead? Oh, Tom, Tom, you do swear to me that you had no hand in it. I couldn't bear that now." Her arms were spread out against the building, her hands clenched. In the darkness he could see her eyes, wide and staring.

"I swear it, Mary. I was not within a mile of Broadso's. I am as innocent of that murder as you are. You will know the truth to-morrow, even if you don't believe me now. I'll never hear the true story. Oh, I don't mind saying I would have given my very soul to have been the one to do it. Maybe you think I'm pleased that he is dead. Well, I'm not! I begrudge those fellows the pleasure they had in killing him. But, this is not the time or place to talk. Let's say good-by here, Mary. You go back to the house. Let me go and do it alone."

She swayed toward him. He caught her on his arm,—an arm of iron. She put her hand to his face.

"Tom," she whispered, "God has taken a hand in our affairs—in yours. You must believe in God! You must give yourself to Him to-night."

His voice broke a little. "I—I guess you'll have to do the prayin', Mary. Go back to the house now and send up a little prayer for me. That's all you've got to do. I can't stay here. It's dangerous. There is the chance that the police may try to connect me with this murder. It's known that I was after him. Don't you see? Good-by, Mary, I—"

"I am going with you, Tom."

She grasped his arm tightly. He breathed heavily once or twice; a groan broke in his throat.

"All right," he said. She felt the great muscle in his arm swell and relax again. "Do you know the way, Tom?" she asked.

"That next street below takes us to the docks. I walked down there this morning. By heaven, Mary, I think you might spare yourself all this. It's too horrible to even think of. Why—why, I just can't do it with you looking on. What do you think I am?"

"You said you would do it, Tom," she insisted dully.

"Bob Grand is dead," he reminded her. "I said that he and I couldn't live on the same earth. It's hard to think of going straight to hell with him not more than two hours ahead of me."

"Come," she said, starting off resolutely. He caught up with her, and they hurried through the alley side by side.

"I'll do it, all right," he said, after they had traversed nearly two blocks in silence. The words came as an epitome of the struggle that was going on in his mind.

"Don't walk so fast, Tom. You are tiring me."

"Tiring you?" he exclaimed. He looked at her bent head and laughed,—a short, mirthless chuckle. "You'll have to forgive me, Mary. You see I've been thinking of something else. Men walk fast when they're in a hurry."

"Is it much farther?" He could scarcely hear the words.

"Six or eight blocks, if I remember right."

She did not speak again until they were in the middle of the second block beyond. From time to time he turned to look at her, his benumbed soul trying to get in touch with the spirit that moved her to come with him to the very brink of the grave. He was puzzled, he could not understand it in her. If there was a hope of any kind lying buried under the weight that was in his breast, he neither recognized nor encouraged it. There was an awful, growing dread that she did not intend to let him go in alone. He tried to put down the ghastly fear. His glances at her became more frequent, less furtive. The thought of this splendid, noble, beautiful creature going down into the black waters after him was almost beyond his power of comprehension, and yet he was slowly allowing it to take a hold on his senses.

He came to an abrupt stop, rigid with horror. His hand fell upon her shoulder, roughly, regardless of the physical pain it was sure to inflict.

"Mary, how can I be sure that you won't jump in after me? You act so queerly. I don't understand you. For Heaven's sake, go back! Don't do anything like that. I can't bear it—I can't bear the thought of you down there in the water, under the hulls, covered with— Ah!" He covered his eyes with his hand.

She listened for a tense moment to the labored breathing of the man. He had thought of her at last! An odd, mysterious smile flickered on her lips. With a sudden convulsive movement she drew the long shaker cloak closer about her shoulders.

"Tom, there is a little park over there, with benches. Let us sit down for a moment."

"You won't do it, Mary, will you?" he pleaded, now completely in the grip of that terrible dread.

"I am not as brave as you are, Tom," she said. He caught a new, vibrant note in her voice. He misconstrued it.

"I call it pretty brave to be able to go down and see a man jump into the river. Not many men could do it, let alone women. It's like seeing a man hung."

She led him, unresisting, to a bench in the corner of the dark little triangle that was called a "square." People were passing by, but no one had stopped there to rest, or to reflect, or to make love. They had the green little park all to themselves.

"Christine was married to-night," she said after they had been seated for a few minutes.

He remarked lifelessly: "Hurried it up on my account, eh? It's bad luck to postpone a wedding, even for a death in the family. Well, I'm glad. She's sure to be happy, God bless her!"

"Yes, she will be very happy."

"I suppose she—and you, too—had a notion that I'd turn up some day to spoil the whole business. So you got it over with, eh?"

"I wanted everything to be settled, that's all."

He was silent for a while, breathing heavily.

"Did she ask about me?"

"Yes."

"You told her I was going away—that I'd probably never see her again?"

"I told her you were gone."

"I suppose she was relieved."

"She cried because you were not there to see her married."

He was fully half a minute in grasping the full meaning of that wonderful sentence.

"Did she?" he asked, lifting his head suddenly. "Honest, Mary? You're not saying it just to—to make me feel—"

He stopped and waited for her to reply to his unuttered question. She shook her head.

"Then she does care a little for me. She hasn't lost all the feeling she used to have—"

"She cried because she was not given a chance to talk with you. She thought she could comfort you, could help you. That was why she cried, Tom."

He allowed his chin to rest in his hands, his elbows on his knees.

"I wonder if I could have— Oh, say, there's no use talking," he ended bitterly.

"What were you about to say, Tom?"

"Nothing."

"Yes, you were. Tell me."

"Oh," he cried, with all the bitterness of a lost, hungry soul, "if I had only known! She could have comforted me. What a fool I was not to see her. I've been cursing myself all day. Now I know why I cursed. It was because I wanted to see her—" He struck himself a violent blow on the mouth, as if that were all that was needed to crush the great longing that was in his breast.

"Yes. Go on, Tom," she said quietly.

"I can't, Mary. I can't talk about it. I guess I'd better say good-by now. I'll lose my nerve if I get to thinking and talking. I don't want to think that I might still get some happiness out of life if—if I went after it right."

She put her cold hand on his big, clenched fist. He looked at her. The faint light from a near-by lamppost struck his face. It was heavy, leaden with despair and misery.

"Almost the last thing she said to me before she went away was this, Tom: 'Some day I shall go to him. He needs some one to love him. I am sure he is not so wicked as—' She got no farther than that. I stopped her."

"She said all— Mary, why did you stop her? Why didn't you want her to say it? Why did you begrudge me a little thing like that?" He was trembling violently. There was misery, not anger or resentment in his voice.

"Tom, are you ready to go to the river?"

He shrank away from her, shuddering, appalled.

"It's hard to die, after all. I—I ought not to have let you tell me all this. It's made it harder. I never thought of it before. Somehow, Mary, I—I think I might have turned out a better man if—if I'd known just how Christine felt." He got to his feet suddenly. "I said I'd do it. You want me to do it. Well, I will!"

She clung to his hand. He turned upon her with an oath on his lips. The light now struck her face. What he saw there caused him to catch his breath and to choke back the imprecation.

"I am convinced that you would do it, Tom, for her sake and mine. You would do it, not because you are weak, but because you are strong. I am satisfied now."

"Satisfied?" he murmured, wonder-struck.

She arose. "Tom, I am not going to say that I love you. You cannot expect that. There is a feeling within me, however, that may develop into something like the old love I once had for you, if you give it the right kind of encouragement—and care."

"What are you saying to me, Mary?" he cried hoarsely.

"You would have given up your life so that Christine might be happy. I am willing to do as much, Tom, toward the same end. I will give up the life I am leading. You want another chance, Tom. Well, you shall have it. I will go where you go, live where you live."

"Mary!" he gasped.

"Christine said you needed help. Well, I will try to give it to you. You have her love. You didn't quite kill that, as you did mine." She took his limp hand in hers and looked up into his eyes. "Perhaps, if both of us try hard, you and I together, Tom, we may be able to make her forget the ugliest part of her life."

"Together? I don't understand."

"I am still your wife," she said, a shrill note creeping into her voice despite the effort she made to be calm.

"You—you mean I won't have to go—to go to the river?" he cried, unable to think beyond that awful alternative.

"I never meant you to do that."

He suddenly took a long, deep breath and lifted his face, to stare about as if trying to convince himself that he was really there, alive and awake.

"I guess I don't quite get your meaning, Mary," he muttered, but his fingers were beginning to tighten on hers. "Of course, I understand you are still my wife, and— You don't mean you—you are going to take me back!"

"No. I am asking you to take me back."

He could not speak for a full minute or more.

"You'll give me another chance? That's what you mean—that's what you're really saying, isn't it?" He was fairly gasping out the words.

"Yes, Tom."

"Oh!" He turned and flung himself on the bench, bursting into tears. "I don't deserve it—I don't deserve it! It's too much to hope for." These and other sentences fell in broken disorder from his lips.

She did not speak, but sat down beside him, laying her hand on his shoulder. After a time, he grew quieter,—then almost deathly still. She shook him gently.

"Will you come home with me now, Tom?" she asked. She too had been crying softly.

He looked up. They were so close together that she could detect the humble, wistful look in his face. His lips moved, but the words did not come at once.

"Home with you?"

"Yes. We have our plans to discuss, Tom."

"To your father's house?" he persisted.

"Yes. He understands. I talked it all over with him this afternoon. It was hard to do, Tom,—it was very hard to hurt that poor old man all over again. But I had it to do, and he understands. He asked me to bring you back with me. I told him I would. He wants to talk with you in the morning."

"Mary," he began, fingering his hat in the extremity of an emotion that almost benumbed him, "I don't know whether you want to hear me say it, but I've never stopped caring for you. It isn't all Christine with me. I just want to tell you that."

"I understand, Tom," she said, still more gently.

"I can't take any help from your father," he managed to say after another long period of silence.

"He will offer nothing but his hand and his well-wishes."

"This is all so unexpected. I'm trying to get too many things through my head at once. Let me think for a minute or two."

She was silent, looking off into the gloomy little street below. A man was whistling gayly near by. From afar came the sound of rumbling street cars. She had not noticed these or any other sounds before. A policeman came up to the corner, stopped and looked at the huddled twain for a minute or two, and then moved off. The sight of that uniform created a sudden chill in her heart.

Tom Braddock began speaking again, in low, steady tones in which there was not only a sort of bitter determination but something like defiance.

"What's more, Mary, I won't accept anything from you. Whatever you've got, put it aside for Christine or against the time when you may need it yourself. I'm not going to live off you. I'm not what I was back in those rotten days. I believe I'm going to be I happy again—I think life's going to be sweet to me after all. Half an hour ago I had but a few minutes to live, as I believed. I don't know just how to take this new grip on life. Maybe I'll be able some time to tell you all that I can't say now. I'm all befuddled. The main point is: I'm going to have a chance to be a man again, a real man; to be your husband and to make Christine forget she was ashamed of me. That's it. That's what I'm trying to say. So, you see, I can't afford to be ashamed of myself. Do you get what I mean?"

"You would be ashamed of yourself if you accepted money or help from me? Is that it?"

"Yes. I can work, Mary. I can support you, if you'll come with me. I know where to go. But you'd better think it over carefully. I can go alone, Mary dear,—I can go alone, if you feel you can't stand being with me."

She hesitated, weighing her words. "I have a plan, Tom, that I want to talk over with you. I'll tell you about it when we get home. I want to know what you think of it. Perhaps you will consider it a good one. It occurred to me this afternoon while I was making preparations to leave the city with you to-morrow."

"You—you had it all thought out before you—"

"I had it all thought out. In fact, Tom, I have the railroad tickets at home in my desk,—two tickets, one way."

"You are the most wonderful woman in all this world, Mary, I'd die for you a thousand times," he cried. It was almost a sob.

She smiled. "I wouldn't allow you to do it even once for me. Come! We will go back the way we came, only we will go in by the front door."

As they turned onto the sidewalk he cast a swift, involuntary glance, as of terror, in the direction of North River. She distinctly heard the quick intake of his breath and the involuntary chatter of his teeth.

"You will sleep in a good, clean bed to-night," she said, reading his thoughts.

He reached forth and touched her arm, timidly at first, as if he were afraid that ever so slight a sign of affection would be repulsed. Finding that she did not shrink or draw away, he ventured to draw her arm through his. His figure was still bent, but the slouching, furtive movement was gone. Mechanically she fell into his stride and they moved swiftly up the street. A clock in a house across the way banged out the hour. Far away, in the neighborhood of Broadway, a raucous-voiced newsboy was crying his "extra." They knew that he was shouting:

"All about the murder!" in that unintelligible jargon of the night.

"We will get it all in the morning papers," she said.

"I hope they don't try to connect me with it—Mary, I'm afraid of that! You'd better let me get out of town to-night."

She shook her head.

He walked with his eyes set straight ahead, trying to understand, trying to get control of his new emotions. Always there was the sharp, ugly little notion that she still despised him, that she was sacrificing herself that he might be drawn as far away as possible from the child she was so anxious to shield.

"I'm going to try my best to make you care for me again," he said, a vast hunger for sympathy and love taking possession of him.

"I hope you may, Tom," she said drearily.

"You're doing this for Christine," he said resentfully. "Just to get me away, so's I can't trouble her. That's it, isn't it? Tell the truth, Mary."

"I would not expect you to do anything for her sake if I were not willing to do a great deal myself," was her enigmatic rejoinder.

"Don't hate me, Mary," he burst out.

She pressed his arm. "I am giving you a chance," she reminded him. There was still a dreariness in her voice, but he did not detect it. He returned the pressure, half hopeful that the beginning already had been made.

Brooks let them in. He had been waiting up for them.

"Mr. Braddock will be here over the night, Brooks."

"Yes, Mrs. Braddock." He opened the door into the library for them, and then silently hastened upstairs.

"You must have been pretty sure of yourself," commented Braddock, in no little wonder. She threw off the shaker cloak.

"There is a cold supper for you in the dining-room, Tom—and a piece of a last-minute wedding cake. You must be hungry. While you are eating we will talk over my plan."

He went about it as if in a dream. For an hour they discussed her plan for the future. In the end he fell in with it.

"I'd be a dog if I didn't give in to you in a matter like this," he said. "You're doing everything for me."

"Our room is at the head of the stairs, the first door to the left, Tom," she said, rising. Her face was very pale; she looked old. "The bath adjoins it. If you don't mind I'll stay downstairs awhile. I have many papers to look over and some letters to write."

He went upstairs to the wide, high bed-chamber with its azure walls. For a long time he stood in the middle of the room, looking around in dull amazement and doubt. Was it really true that he was there, in the midst of all this elegance and comfort? He glanced at his big hands and started with shame. They were not very clean. The soiled cuffs of an ill-fitting "hickory" shirt came down over his wrists. Involuntarily he pushed them up. The greenish-gray of the coarse jeans garments he wore, clumsy and crumpled, was sadly out of harmony with the delicate, refined colors that surrounded him. It seemed to him all at once that he jarred on himself.

Suddenly his gaze fell upon a neatly folded suit of clothes lying across the foot of the bed. The garments were dark blue, with a thin stripe running through the cloth, and they were new. On the center table there was a straw hat. Shoes stood beside the chair at the head of the bed. An immaculate white shirt hung over the back of the chair, while on the seat were undergarments. He rubbed his eyes. Then he sat down on the chaise longue and stared, with growing comprehension. The coverlet on the bed was neatly turned down; a night-gown was there, clean and white. Beside it was another, soft and filmy.

Braddock put his hands to his face and sobbed dry, choking sobs that were not of anguish, but of bewilderment.

At last he pulled himself together and arose to make a tour of the room. On the dressing-table there were collars and neckties and cuffs. His own old-fashioned silver watch lay there before him, with its heavy gold chain attached. He remembered with a pang that he had given it to her for preservation long ago, because it had once belonged to his grandfather and he was sentimental about it.

He looked again at the clothes he wore, the clothes the state had placed on him when he left the penitentiary; he looked at his soiled hands; in the glass he caught a glimpse of his haggard, unshaven face and the dirt streaks that the tears had made. With a cry of disgust he began tearing off the hated garments.

She had done all this for him! She had known all along that he was to come home with her.

Half an hour later he came from the bath, scrubbed until his skin was red. He was clean! He was shaved! His hands were amazingly white.

Like a boy, he tried on the fresh, new, clean-smelling clothes. Even to the shoes the fit in all cases was perfect. She remembered everything—the size of his collars, the size of his shoes, the length of his sleeves: the measurements of Tom Braddock as she had known him when they were young together.

He picked up the filmy night-dress and kissed it a dozen times. Then he looked at the other one. A grim smile touched his lips. How long had it been since he had slept in a thing like that? It seemed like centuries.

He sat down on the side of the bed and dropped his chin to his hands, suddenly a prey to widely varying thoughts, desires and emotions. For many minutes he drooped there, thinking, wondering, doubting.

Over in a corner stood a small new leather-bound trunk. He did not get up to look at it, or into it. He knew without looking.

"It's like a fairy story," he murmured over and over again. "I'll do anything in the world for her, as long as I live!"

Suddenly he started up. He would go down to her. He would renew his pledges, his promises. As he opened the door to pass out to the stairs he heard her moving in the hall below. She tried the front door. Then the lower light went out. He heard her mounting the stairs slowly. She was coming up to him!

When she got to a point where she could see the streak of light from the partially open door she came to a stop. A slight shudder went over her body. Her steps were slower after that, dragging, dejected, with one or two complete pauses. Braddock understood. He had been listening to that pitiful approach of the woman who was his wife. He could almost see the expression in her face.

A sudden wave of pity swept over him. He gently closed the door and locked it on the inside.

She came on and turned the knob, feebly, timorously.

"Good-night," he called out from the most distant corner of the room.

Fully ten seconds passed before she responded. He felt somehow that she held her breath during that time.

"Good-night," she cried, a vibrant note in her voice. He heard her as she went down the hall. She was running.