ace, look at me," he said. "Are you happy?"

Their eyes met and there was no immediate answer. What each saw in the
eyes of the other was strange and puzzling. She saw something like
hopeless dread, struggling to suppress itself beneath a glassy film; he
saw pitiful fear, sorrow, shame, everything but the glad lovelight he
had expected. If their hearts had been cold before, they were
freezing now.

"Happy?" she managed to articulate. "Happy?"

"Yes, happy," he repeated as witlessly.

"Don't look at me, Hugh. Don't! I cannot bear it," she wailed
frantically, again placing her hands over her eyes. His arms dropped
from their unwilling position and he gasped in amazement.

"What is it, Grace? What is the matter? What is it, Veath?" he gasped.
She sank to her knees on the floor and sobbed.

"Oh, Hugh! I am not worthy to be loved by you." He tried to lift her to
her feet, absolutely dumb with amazement. "Don't! Don't! Let me lie here
till you are gone. I can't bear to have you see my face again.

"Grace!" he cried blankly.

"Oh, if I had been drowned this could have been avoided. Why don't you
say something, Henry? I cannot tell him." Veath could only shake his
head in response to Ridgeway's look of amazed inquiry.

"Is she mad?" groaned the returned lover.

"Mad? No, I am not mad," she cried shrilly, desperately. "Hugh, I know I
will break your heart, but I must tell you. I cannot deceive you. I
cannot be as I once was to you."

"Cannot be--deceived me--once was--" murmured he, bewildered.

"While I mourned for you as dead I learned to love another. Forgive me,
forgive me!" It was more than a minute before he could grasp the full
extent of her confession and he could not believe his ears.

Gradually his mind emerged from its oblivion and the joy that rushed to
his heart passed into every vein in his body. At his feet the unhappy
girl; at the window the rigid form of the man to whom he knew her love
had turned; in the centre of this tableau he stood, his head erect, his
lungs full, his face aglow.

"Say you will forgive me, Hugh. You would not want me, knowing what you
do."

"For Heaven's sake, Hugh," began Veath; but the words choked him.

"So you love another," said Hugh slowly, and cleverly concealing his
elation at the unexpected change in the situation. He was not without a
sense of humor, and forgetting, for the moment, the seriousness of her
revelation, he could not resist the temptation to play the