ngth of Europe and, after
that, had zig-zagged along the cities of the Levant and the fringes of
Africa.

Meanwhile, the man to whom it was addressed was wandering from the upper
Nile to Victoria Nyanza and beyond--where mail routes run out and end.
Acknowledging in her thoughts, from the first frost on Cape Cod to the
middle of winter, that temporizing only spelled weakness, Conscience had
none the less temporized. She said to herself: "Nothing he wrote _now_
would alter matters." Still with a somewhat leaky logic she added: "But
I'll give him a month to answer before I fix the date." When the month
had passed without result she granted herself other continuances, facing
alike, with a gentle obduracy, the pleas of her elderly lover and the
importunities of a father who threatened to murder himself with the
self-inflicted tortures of impatience.

At length she capitulated to the combined forces of entreaty, cajolery
and insistence. The fight was lost.

Through the preparations for that wedding she went without even the
simulation of joy or glamour. At least she would be honest of attitude,
but days which filled the house with wedding guests brought to her
manner a transformation. Her decision was made and if she was to do the
thing at all she meant to do it gallantly and with at least the outward
seeming of full confidence. She meant to betray to these visitors no
lurking misery of spirit; no note of struggle; no vestige of doubt. The
eyes which burned apprehensive and terror-stricken, throughout the
darkness of interminable nights, were none the less serene and regally
assured by day. The groom, too, seemed rejuvenated by such a spirit as
sometimes brings to autumn a summer quality more ardent than summer's
own. At the end of his _fiancee's_ doubtings, he fatuously told himself,
had come conviction. She knew at last how much stauncher a thing was his
own dependable strength and ripened manhood than the frothy charm of a
half-fledged gallant who had crumpled under the test.

Among the guests who for several days filled both the manse and
Tollman's house, were two who were not entirely beguiled by Conscience's
gracious and buoyant demeanor. One pair of these observant eyes was
violet blue and full of starry freshness. Intimate letters from
Conscience, in the old days, had invested Stuart Farquaharson with a
romantic guise for their possessor and Eben Tollman scarcely measured up
to that standard.

The other pair of