learly he saw now--when it was too
late! Her life was a broken thing, robbed, stripped and despoiled for
all the years to come. Their love had not been love--she had given it
its name--"passion, vice, lust, sin, degradation and misery and shame."
And then love had come to her, into her life, love as God had meant love
to be, and she had learned what love was she had said--only that she
might never know its fulness, only that it might bring her added
bitterness and added sorrow! Thornton had asked her to marry him that
night--and she had refused him--because the past, it must have been as a
shuddering, hideous phantom that the past had risen before her, had left
her no other thing to do but turn away. It seemed he could see her--see
her bury her face in her hands and--

He stopped short in his walk. Was he changed so much as this! Did he
care so much that it was her happiness--even with another--that counted
most! Yes; it was true--he was changed indeed. And the change had
brought him too, it seemed, to learn what love was--too late.

He went forward again--a little more slowly; now; a sadness upon him,
but, through the sadness, an uplift from that new sense of freedom that
was as a balm, soothing him in the most curious way. His had been a rude
awakening--mind and body and soul had been torn asunder; but he knew
now, as he recalled the hours just past when he had looked on fear, when
the gamut of human passion had raged over him, when he had stood
staggered and appalled before, yes, before his God, that he had come
forth a new man. And how strange had been the ending, how strange and
simple, and yet how significant, typifying the broad, clean outlook on
life, bringing coherency to his tottering mind, had been those words of
Thornton's--"because he loved her."

He had reached the end of the wagon track now, and he walked across the
lawn, his steps noiseless on the velvet sward, and passed between the
maples; and the moon gleam--for the flying clouds, rear-guard of the
routed storm, were flung wide apart, dispersed--fell upon a coiled and
huddled little figure all in white, that was quite still and motionless
upon the rustic seat beside the porch.

She did not see him, did not hear him, until he stood before her and
called her name.

"Helena!" he said unsteadily. "Helena!"

She raised her head and looked at him; and then she rose from the bench,
and, still holding to it by one hand, drew back a little. There was no