tist before everything, Michael," she said. "Look--look
well!"

He took the two work-worn hands in his and drew her nearer him.

"I'm your lover before everything," he answered. "When will you come to
me, Magda?"

"No, no," she said whisperingly. "I mustn't come. You'll never--never
quite forgive me. Some day the past would come between us again--you'll
never forget it all."

"No," he replied steadily. "Perhaps not. Consequences _cannot_ be
evaded. There are things that can't be forgotten. But one forgives. And
I love you--love you, Magda, so that I can't face life without you." His
voice vibrated. "The past must always lie like a shadow on our love. But
you're my woman--my soul! And if you've sinned, then it must be my sin,
too----"

She leaned away from him.

"Do you mean--June?" she asked.

He nodded with set lips.

"Then--then you don't know--you haven't heard?"

His expression answered her and her face changed--grew suddenly radiant,
transfigured. "Oh, Saint Michel--Saint Michel! Then there is one thing I
can do, one gift I have still left to give! Oh, my dear, I can take away
the shadow!" Her voice breathless and shaken, she told him how June had
died--all that Dan Storran had learned from the doctor who had attended
her.

"I know I hurt her--hurt her without thinking. But oh, Michael! Thank
God, it wasn't through me that she died!"

And Michael, as he folded his arms about her, knew that the shadow which
had lain between him and the woman he loved was there no longer. They
were free--freed from those "ropes of steel" which had held them bound.
Free to go together and find once more their Garden of Eden.

Presently, when those first perfect moments of reunion were past, Magda
gave utterance to the doubts and perplexities that still vexed her soul.

"Pain may purify," she said slowly. "But it spoils, Michael, and blots,
and ruins. I think, after all, pain is meaningless."

Michael's grey, steady eyes met her troubled ones.

"I don't think pain--just as pain--purifies," he answered quickly.
"Pain is merely horrible. It is the _willingness to suffer_ that shrives
us--not the pain itself."

Later still, the essential woman in her came into its own again. "I
shall never be able to sit for you any more, Saint Michel," she said
regretfully. "I'm nobody's model--now!"

She could see only her lost beauty--the unthinking, radiant beauty of
mere youth. But Michael could see all that her voluntary renu