iting and watching.

Presently she raised her head, but her swimming eyes did not seek his.
They did not get so high. After one swift glance towards his own, they
dropped to where his heart might be, and her voice trembled as she said:

"Long ago Alice Tynemouth said I ought to marry a man who would master
me. She said I needed a heavy hand over me--and the shackles on my
wrists."

She had forgotten that these phrases were her own; that she had used
them concerning herself the night before the tragedy.

"I think she was right," she added. "I had never been mastered, and I
was all childish wilfulness and vanity. I was never worth while. You
took me too seriously, and vanity did the rest."

"You always had genius," he urged, gently, "and you were so beautiful."

She shook her head mournfully. "I was only an imitation always--only a
dresden-china imitation of the real thing I might have been, if I had
been taken right in time. I got wrong so early. Everything I said or
did was mostly imitation. It was made up of other people's acts and
words. I could never forget anything I'd ever heard; it drowned any
real thing in me. I never emerged--never was myself."

"You were a genius," he repeated again. "That's what genius does. It
takes all that ever was and makes it new."

She made a quick spasmodic protest of her hand. She could not bear to
have him praise her. She wanted to tell him all that had ever been, all
that she ought to be sorry for, was sorry for now almost beyond
endurance. She wanted to strip her soul bare before him; but she caught
the look of home in his eyes, she was at his knees at peace, and what
he thought of her meant so much just now--in this one hour, for this
one hour. She had had such hard travelling, and here was a rest-place
on the road.

He saw that her soul was up in battle again, but he took her arms, and
held them gently, controlling her agitation. Presently, with a great
sigh, her forehead drooped upon his hands. They were in a vast theatre
of war, and they were part of it; but for the moment sheer waste of
spirit and weariness of soul made peace in a turbulent heart.

"It's her real self--at last," he kept saying to himself, "She had to
have her chance, and she has got it."

Outside in a dark corner of the veranda, Al'mah was in reverie. She
knew from the silence within that all was well. The deep peace of the
night, the thing that was happening in the house, gave her a moment's
surce