he sweetest, purest, cleverest woman he knew. And she loved him! A rush
of ecstasy flooded his whole being; how sweet she was when he made her
say she loved him--when she surrendered her hands, when she raised her
gravely smiling blue eyes! What a little wife she would be, what a gay
little comrade, and some day, perhaps, what a mother!

Again the Fact. After such a little interval of radiant peace it seemed
to descend upon him with an ugly violence. It was true; nothing that
they could do now would alter it. And, of course, the thing was serious.
If anything in life was serious, this was. It was frightful--it seemed
sacrilegious to connect such things for an instant with Julia. Dear
little Julia, with her crisp little uniforms, her authority in the
classroom, her charming deference to Aunt Sanna! And she loved him----

"Damn it, the thing either counts or it doesn't count!" Jim muttered,
striding down Market Street, past darkened shops and corners where
lights showed behind the swinging doors of saloons. Either it was all
important or it was not important at all. With most women, all
important, of course. With Julia--Jim let his mind play for a few
minutes with the thought of renunciation. There would be no trouble with
Julia, and Aunt Sanna could easily be silenced.

He shook the mere vision from him with an angry shake of the head. She
belonged to him now, his little steadfast, serious girl. And she had
deceived them all these years! Not that he could blame her for it!
Naturally, Aunt Sanna would never have overlooked that, and presumably
no other woman would have engaged her, knowing it, even to wash dishes
and sweep steps.

"Lord, what a world for women!" thought Jim, in simple wonder. Hunted
down mercilessly, pushed at the first sign of weakening, they know not
where, and then lost! Hundreds of thousands of them forever outcast, to
pay through all the years that are left to them for that hour of
yielding! Hundreds of thousands of them, and his Julia only different
because she had made herself so--

It seemed to Jim, in his club now, and sunk in a deep chair before the
wood fire in the quiet library, that he could never marry her. It must
simply be his sorrow to have loved Julia--God, how he did love her!

But, through all their years together, there must not be that shadow
upon their happiness; it was too hideous to be endured. "It must be
endured," mused Jim wretchedly. "It is true!

"Anyway," he went on p