as also for a
woman who had plucked the only fruit she had ever coveted with her
whole heart. There had been moments of reward, however, a reward which
perhaps a lesser spirit might never have known. It was the passionate
satisfaction that her hands, her love, were able to minister to the
well-being of the man she loved, for all that another woman occupied
her place in his heart.

Feelings such as these filled her heart now. They had so filled it
that morning during her hour of superintending the work of the builders
engaged upon the reconstruction of Jeff's house. This was nearly
completed, and somehow she felt when all the preparations were finished
the last support must be banished forever. Then there would be nothing
left her but to watch, perhaps from afar, the happiness of the other
woman basking in the love for which she would willingly have given her
life.

There were moments when her spirit furiously rebelled, when she felt
that the sacrifice was too great, when the limits of human endurance
forbade submission to her lot. They were moments when mad jealousy
rose up and threatened her bulwark of spiritual resistance. And at
such time her battle was furious and hard, and she emerged therefrom
scarred and suffering, but with a spirit unbroken and even strengthened.

Then her pride, a small gentle thing, added its quota to her support.
No one should pity her, no one should ever, ever know anything of the
sufferings she endured. No, not even her beloved father. So her
smile, even her ready laughter, was enlisted in her support, and the
manner of her discussion of the work on Jeff's house was an education
in courageous acting.

But her father remained wholly undeceived. He saw with a vision
rendered doubly acute by perfect sympathy. He read through every smile
to the tears lying behind it. He noted the change in the tone of the
laugh. He missed nothing of the painful abstraction at odd moments
when Nan believed she was wholly unobserved. Nor did he misinterpret
the language these things expressed. But for all his heart bled for
the girl--and in his moments of solitude he bitterly cursed the woman
who had robbed him of a son, and heaped every scathing epithet of his
rough vocabulary upon the head of the man himself--he gave no sign that
the fair world about them concealed shadowed corners, or that the life
which was theirs was not one triumph of eternal delight. Thus was Nan
helped, all unconsciou