and appealing upon her breast, rising and falling with her breath. A
lovely bride!

David, stern, true, pained and appreciative, suddenly awakened to what a
dreadful thing he had done.

Here was this lovely woman, her womanhood not yet unfolded from the bud,
but lovely in promise even as her sister had been in truth, her charms,
her dreams, her woman's ways, her love, her very life, taken by him as
ruthlessly and as thoughtlessly as though she had been but a wax doll, and
put into a home where she could not possibly be what she ought to be,
because the place belonged to another. Thrown away upon a man without a
heart! That was what she was! A sacrifice to his pride! There was no other
way to put it.

It fairly frightened him to think of the promises he had made. "Love,
honor, cherish," yes, all those he had promised, and in a way he could
perform, but not in the sense that the wedding ceremony had meant, not in
the way in which he would have performed them had the bride been Kate, the
choice of his love. Oh, why, why had this awful thing come upon him!

And now his conscience told him he had done wrong to take this girl away
from the possibilities of joy in the life that might have been hers, and
sacrifice her for the sake of saving his own sufferings, and to keep his
friends from knowing that the girl he was to marry had jilted him.

As he stood before the lovely, defenceless girl her very beauty and
innocence arraigned him. He felt that God would hold him accountable for
the act he had so thoughtlessly committed that day, and a burden of
responsibility settled upon his weight of sorrow that made him groan
aloud. For a moment his soul cried out against it in rebellion. Why could
he not have loved this sweet self-sacrificing girl instead of her fickle
sister? Why? Why? She might perhaps have loved him in return, but now
nothing could ever be! Earth was filled with a black sorrow, and life
henceforth meant renunciation and one long struggle to hide his trouble
from the world.

But the girl whom he had selfishly drawn into the darkness of his sorrow
with him, she must not be made to suffer more than he could help. He must
try to make her happy, and keep her as much as possible from knowing what
she had missed by coming with him! His lips set in stern resolve, and a
purpose, half prayer, went up on record before God, that he would save her
as much as he knew how.

Lying helpless so, she appealed to him. Asking noth