rth.

As he drove he thought of Lorraine, of her love for her father
and her goodness. He already recognized that dominant passion in
her, her unselfish adoration of her father--a father who sat all
day behind bolted doors trifling with metals and gases and little
spinning, noiseless wheels. The selfish to the unselfish, the
dead to the living, the dwarf to the giant, and the sinner to the
saint--this is the world and they that dwell therein.

He thought of her as he had seen her last, smiling up into the
handsome, bearded face that questioned her. No, the wound was
nothing--a little blood lost--enough to make her faint at his
feet--that was all. But his precious box was safe--and she had
flung her loyal arms about the man who saved it and had kissed
him before her father, because he had secured what was dearer to
her than life--her father's happiness--a little metal box full of
it.

Her father was very grateful and very solicitous about her
wounded shoulder; but he opened his box before he thought about
bandages. Everything was intact, except the conservatory window
and his daughter's shoulder. Both could be mended--but his box!
ah, that, if lost, could never be replaced.

Jack's throat was hard and dry. A lump came into it, and he
swallowed with a shrug, and flicked at a fly on the headstall. A
vision of Sir Thorald, bending over little Alixe, came before his
eyes. "Pah!" he muttered, in disgust. Sir Thorald was one of
those men who cease to care for a woman when she begins to care
for them. Jack knew it; that was why he had been so gentle with
Molly Hesketh, who had turned his head when he was a boy and
given him his first emotions--passion, hate--and then knowledge;
for of all the deep emotions that a man shall know before he dies
the first consciousness of knowledge is the most profound; it
sounds the depths of heaven and hell in the space of time that
the heart beats twice.

He was passing through the woods now, the lovely oak and beech
woods of Lorraine. An ancient dame, bending her crooked back
beneath a load of fagots, gave him "God bless you!" and he drew
rein and returned the gift--but his was in silver, with the head
of his imperial majesty stamped on one side.

As he drove, rabbits ran back into the woods, hoisting their
white signals of conciliation. "Peace and good will" they seemed
to read, "but a wise rabbit takes to the woods." Pheasants, too,
stepped daintily from under the filbert bushes, t