face of his long-dead father,
white and set with some inward pain of which he did not speak. Dick
remembered that as a boy that had seemed to him a pitiful thing. Now he
saw it somewhat as the believers once saw the face of the martyr, the
visible manifestation of triumph--the success of being true to yourself
in spite of all the world.

Dick drew a long breath and dropped his boyhood without even a regret.
He knew he could accept conditions and limitations and not kick against
the pricks, but quietly, as one who is capable of being superior to
them. The bitterness, the depression of an hour, two hours, ago faded
into trifles, and the thing nearest to his consciousness was that dead
father who had had his wound and lived his life in spite of it; nearer,
infinitely nearer, than the living wife whom a slight noise brought to
his remembrance. He had forgotten her. She belonged now to the elements
outside his dearest life.

He turned toward Lena, waiting, silent, uncomprehending,--poor little
Lena, a woman who could never be anything more. He felt a wave of
strange new pity for her, unlike the pity he had once experienced for
her poverty of body, a sorrow, this, for what she was in herself, his
wife--poor, poor little child!

Lena sat still, picking at the bit of paper, but she looked up now,
moved in spite of herself by the exultant ring in Dick's voice, as he
strode over to her and held out both his hands.

"And so we begin again--honestly, this time. Perhaps some day you'll
come to accept my standards inwardly as well as outwardly. Perhaps
you'll even come to love me, some day, little wife."

Lena took his hands submissively. Her small tyranny, her stock of little
ambitions had slipped from her and she shivered as though she was
stripped and cold; but behind there was a kind of delight in this new
Dick, with authoritative eyes into which she stared, wondering still,
with trepidation, what he was going to make of her life.

CHAPTER XXII

ANOTHER BEGINNING

Norris, as he left Percival's house, had a glimpse of Lena coming down
the hall, wonderful in her shimmering evening gown, brave in jewels. She
dazzled him, though he despised his eyes for admiring her and told
himself that she was tinsel.

He bowed in response to her curt nod, well aware that she thought him
too unimportant to merit her courtesy, while she resented her husband's
inexplicable regard for him. He went out into a cold winter drizzle and