n, didn't you? Well, mine is here for you."

"Oh, sweetheart, you mustn't!" she cried passionately, her lips
unconsciously framing the unspoken cry of her heart as she strove to
escape from him.

"Ah, but I shall!" he answered. "You've called me 'sweetheart,' and
that gives me the right." And he kissed her hot cheek and laughed the
light, contented little laugh of the conqueror, nor could all her
frantic pleadings and struggling prevail upon him to let her go. In
the end, she did the obvious, the human thing. She clasped him tightly
round the neck, and, forgetting everything in the consuming wonder of
the fact that this man loved her with a profound and holy love, she
weakly gave herself up to his caresses, satisfying her heart-hunger
for a few blessed, wonderful moments before hardening herself to the
terrible task of impressing upon him the hopelessness of it all and
sending him upon his way. By degrees, she cried herself dry-eyed and
leaned against him, striving to collect her dazed thoughts. And then
he spoke.

"I know what you're going to say, dear. From a worldly point of view,
you are quite right. Seemingly, without volition on our part, we have
evolved a distressing, an impossible situation--"

"Oh, I'm so glad that you understand!" she gasped.

"And yet," he continued soberly, "love such as ours is not a light
thing to be passed lightly by. To me, Nan Brent, you are sacred; to
you, I yearn to be all things that--the--other man was not. I didn't
realize until I entered unannounced and found you so desolate that I
loved you. For two weeks you have been constantly in my thoughts, and
I know now that, after all, you were my boyhood sweetheart."

"I know you were mine," she agreed brokenly. "But that's just a little
tender memory now, even if we said nothing about it then. We are
children no longer, Donald dear; we must be strong and not surrender
to our selfish love."

"I do not regard it as selfish," he retorted soberly. "It seems most
perfectly natural and inevitable. Why, Nan, I didn't even pay you the
preliminary compliment of telling you I loved you or asking you if you
reciprocated my affection. It appeared to me I didn't have to; that it
was a sort of mutual understanding--for here we are. It seems it just
was to be--like the law of gravitation."

She smiled up at him, despite her mental pain.

"I'm not so certain, dear," she answered, "that I'm not wicked enough
to rejoice. It will make our renun