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Her quiet lucidity startled hi her insensible Under her hat-briht tremor of the nostril above her resolutely steadied lips

"Well--?" he questioned, sitting down on the bench, and looking up at her with a frown that he tried to make playful

She dropped back into her seat and went on: "You ine One hears and one notices--one has one's feelings and ideas And of course, long before you told me that you cared for me, I'd known that there was so about it two years ago at Newport And once I saw you sitting together on the verandah at a dance--and when she came back into the house her face was sad, and I felt sorry for her; I reed"

Her voice had sunk al her hands about the handle of her sunshade The young entle pressure; his heart dilated with an inexpressible relief

"My dear child--was THAT it? If you only knew the truth!"

She raised her head quickly "Then there is a truth I don't know?"

He kept his hand over hers "I meant, the truth about the old story you speak of"

"But that's what I want to knoland--what I ought to know I couldn't have --an unfairness--to somebody else And I want to believe that it would be the same with you What sort of a life could we build on such foundations?"

Her face had taken on a look of such tragic courage that he felt like bowing hi time," she went on "I've wanted to tell you that, when two people really love each other, I understand that there ht that they should--should go against public opinion And if you feel yourself in any way pledgedpledged to the person we've spoken ofand if there is any wayany way in which you can fulfill your pledgeeven by her getting a divorceNewland, don't give her up because ofthat her fears had fastened upon an episode so remote and so completely of the past as his love-affair with Mrs Thorley Rushworth gave way to wonder at the generosity of her view There was so superhuman in an attitude so recklessly unorthodox, and if other problems had not pressed on hiy of the Wellands' daughter urging him to limpse of the precipice they had skirted, and full of a nee at the irlhood