n turned into nights of late,
else I would not have forgotten. Are you glad you are married, Grace?"

"Very glad," Grace whispered. "Are you glad?"

"Very," said Sedgwick, "even as is the ransomed soul when the symphonies
of Summer Land first give their enchantment to the spirit ear."

"I will tell you why I forgot, Rose," said Jack. "My life did not count
until you became a part of myself. I am really but a year old, and you do
not chide one-year-old kids for being forgetful."

"What glorified prevaricators these men are, Grace, are they not?" said
Rose.

"O, Rose!" said Grace. "The mission of woman is to suffer and be devoted
in her suffering, and how could we carry out our mission if all men were
good, and had good memories, and did not run away to Africa and Venezuela
and Australia, and come home with fevers, and--and--." Then she kissed
Sedgwick, and jumping up caught Rose by the arm, and said: "Let us punish
them by running away from them."

As they walked away Sedgwick watched them, and when they turned a corner
of the veranda, said: "Jack, would you give the year's happiness just
past for all the gold in Africa?"

"No, indeed," was the reply; "but you had the strength to leave your
bride on your marriage day for a chance of gaining a little of that
gold."

"O, no, old friend," said Sedgwick. "We had enough money left, but there
was a principle at stake. I went to vindicate that principle if I could."

"Pardon me, Jim," said Jack. "But you were stronger than I could have
been. I could not have left my bride then. I had waited so long, that to
have parted then would have broken her heart and would have destroyed
me."

"I realized all that, Jack," said his friend; "so did Grace, and we both
sympathized with you both, and decided that the cup of bitterness must be
turned from you."

"Of course," said Jack. "What you did was jolly grand; what you have
done has been so splendid that I cannot express my thoughts of it yet;
I can't, by Jove! And Gracie's part through all has been superb. I think,
too, your sick friend has been pure gold through it all."

"Pure diamonds rather," said Sedgwick. "O Jack, you do not half
comprehend the grandeur of that sterling man. When his heart was slowly
shriveling up in his breast, he forgot himself and his sorrow to cheer
me, and when it was necessary to go for the machinery, he insisted that I
should go, and he, of his own accord, went back to the depths of that
South