earer and clearer. "Death destroys a
man: the idea of Death saves him." Behind the coffins and the skeletons
that stay the vulgar mind lies something so immense that all that
is great in us responds to it. Men of the world may recoil from the
charnel-house that they will one day enter, but Love knows better. Death
is his foe, but his peer, and in their age-long struggle the thews of
Love have been strengthened, and his vision cleared, until there is no
one who can stand against him.

"So never give in," continued the girl, and restated again and again the
vague yet convincing plea that the Invisible lodges against the Visible.
Her excitement grew as she tried to cut the rope that fastened Leonard
to the earth. Woven of bitter experience, it resisted her. Presently
the waitress entered and gave her a letter from Margaret. Another note,
addressed to Leonard, was inside. They read them, listening to the
murmurings of the river.

CHAPTER XXVIII

For many hours Margaret did nothing; then she controlled herself, and
wrote some letters. She was too bruised to speak to Henry; she could
pity him, and even determine to marry him, but as yet all lay too deep
in her heart for speech. On the surface the sense of his degradation was
too strong. She could not command voice or look, and the gentle words
that she forced out through her pen seemed to proceed from some other
person.

"My dearest boy," she began, "this is not to part us. It is everything
or nothing, and I mean it to be nothing. It happened long before we ever
met, and even if it had happened since, I should be writing the same, I
hope. I do understand."

But she crossed out "I do understand"; it struck a false note. Henry
could not bear to be understood. She also crossed out, "It is everything
or nothing." Henry would resent so strong a grasp of the situation. She
must not comment; comment is unfeminine.

"I think that'll about do," she thought.

Then the sense of his degradation choked her. Was he worth all this
bother? To have yielded to a woman of that sort was everything, yes,
it was, and she could not be his wife. She tried to translate his
temptation into her own language, and her brain reeled. Men must be
different even to want to yield to such a temptation. Her belief in
comradeship was stifled, and she saw life as from that glass saloon on
the Great Western which sheltered male and female alike from the fresh
air. Are the sexes really races, each with