ore blighting convictions held part. In
his defiance and egotism he had muddled things in a desperate way. In
the cold, clear light of conventional relations the past few weeks,
shorn of the glamour cast by his romantic love and supposed contempt for
social restrictions, stood forth startlingly significant. At the moment
Truedale could not conceive how he had ever been capable of playing the
fool as he had! Not for one instant did this realization affect his love
and loyalty to Nella-Rose; but that he should have been swept from his
moorings by passion, reduced him to a state of contempt for the folly he
had perpetrated. And, he thought, if he now, after a few days, could so
contemplate his acts how could he suppose that others would view them
with tolerance and sympathy?

No; he must accept the inevitable results of his action. His love, his
earnest intention of some day living his own life in his own way, were
to cost him more than he, blinded by selfishness and passion in the
hills, had supposed.

Well, he was ready to pay to the uttermost though it cost him the
deepest heart-ache. As he was prepared to undertake the burden his
uncle's belief in him entailed, so he was prepared, now that he saw
things clearly, to forego the dearest and closest ties of his old life.

He wondered how he could ever have dreamed that he could go to Lynda and
Brace with his amazing confession and expect them, in the first moment
of shock, to open their hearts and understand him. He almost laughed,
now, as he pictured the absurdity. And just then he drew himself up
sharply and came to his conclusion.

He could not lay himself bare to any one as a sentimental ass; he must
arrange things as soon as possible to return South; he would, just
before starting, tell Lynda and Brace of his attachment for Nella-Rose.
They would certainly understand why, in the stress and strain of recent
events, he had not intruded his startling news before. He would neither
ask nor expect sympathy or cooperation. He must assume that they could
not comprehend him. This was going to be the hardest wrench of his life,
Truedale recognized that, but it was the penalty he felt he must pay.

Then he would go--for his wife! He would secure her privately, by all
the necessary conventions he had spurned so madly--he would bring her to
his people and leave to her sweetness and tender charm the winning of
that which he, in his blindness, had all but lost.

So, in this mo