d has permitted in my pitiless destiny. Am I unwomanly? If
I plead for my life, who can blame me? And shall that which is more than
life go from me without a word? Oh, I cannot smile and look cold as
though I was not hurt: I am pierced and torn. Yet, Christian, for your
sake, rather than for mine, I entreat. You would bring desolation into
both our lives. I might endure it, but how could you bear through the
years the memory of your deed? You are trampling on your manhood. You
are giving to this woman's hungry heart a stone: you are buying with a
lie the holiest thing in her womanhood."

"For four generations my house has withstood every financial storm. The
honorable name which my ancestors bequeathed to me I will maintain at
every hazard," Christian replied with gloomy energy.

"And you will marry Miss Jerome?"

"Yes: it is my only hope."

"Then God help you, Christian. Your lot is harder than mine. At the
worst, my life shall be true: I shall hide no lie in my heart, to fester
there." Her words, begun in tenderness, ended in a tone of scorn. "And
now I must ask you to see me home."

She left the room, and soon returned cloaked and hooded, to find
Christian waiting in overcoat and gloves and with hat in hand. With her
arm in his they walked in perfect silence through the gay, bustling
streets, passing God knows how many other spirits as sad as their own.
When they came to the humble little house which was Mary's home,
Christian stopped on the step as though he would say something, but Mary
said "Good-night," and passed into the hall.

We magazine-writers have no chance in the space allotted to a short
story for a quantitative analysis of emotions and situations, or for
following the processes by which marked changes come about in the human
heart. We must content ourselves with informing the reader that certain
changes or modifications ensued, trusting that he will receive the
statement without requiring reasons or the _modus operandi_.

For a time it seemed to Mary Trigillgus that the sun would never shine
for her again, but a certain admixture in her feeling of scorn and
contempt for Christian prevented her from sinking into a total
despondency. As she revolved day after day the strange separation of two
lives which should have flowed on together, there grew in her heart a
kind of bitterness toward the society which had demanded the separation.
And then the diffused bitterness gathered, and was concentrated on