and carelessness of manner than by his
actual words of denial, the young wife gave an exclamation of delight.

"Oh, I'm so glad!" she exclaimed. "You've no idea how relieved I feel.
It was worrying me terribly to feel that you might be in difficulties
and had not thought enough of me to take me into your confidence."
Looking at him appealingly she added:

"You will always confide in me, won't you Ken?"

"Sure I will, sweetheart----"

Trembling with the ardor he was trying to control he seized hold of her
hand and drew her on to his knee. She offered no resistance, but
passively sat there, clasped against his broad shoulder, her face
radiant with happiness at the load which his words had taken off her
mind.

Putting his arm round her waist, he leaned forward as if to kiss her,
but drawing quickly back she said:

"There's still something else I must ask you before my happiness is
quite complete."

"What's that?" he demanded, impatient at these continual interruptions
to his amorous advances.

Turning she looked steadily into his face, as if trying to read the
truth or falsity of his answer. She could not see his eyes, veiled as
they were by the glasses, but that sensitive mouth she knew so well,
that determined chin, that high forehead crowned by the bushy brown
hair with its solitary white lock--all these were as dear to her as
they had always been. To think that he might have fondled some other
woman as he was now fondling her was intolerable agony.

"Kenneth," she said slowly and impressively, "are you sure that there
is no part of your life that you have kept hidden from me?"

He started and for a moment changed color. What did she mean? Was it
possible that she suspected the substitution, or was she alluding to
some past history of his brother's life, of which he knew nothing?
Evasively, he answered:

"Why all these question, sweetheart, the first day I come home. Is
this the kind of welcome you promised me, the one I had a right to
expect. I am very tired. Let us go to bed."

His arm still around her, he again drew her to him and, stooping, tried
to reach her mouth with his own. But again she resisted, her mind too
disturbed by jealousy to be in a mood to respond to his wooing. Gently
she said:

"I know you are tired, Ken. I am tired, too,--tired of all these
rumors and slanderous insinuations. I have been made unhappy by
hearing this gossip. It is my right to tell you what I have hea