t that brief period during
which Leslie Grey had swayed her heart with his tempestuous manner,
for the rest it was Iredale. She tried to shut him out; to contemplate
his removal from the round of her daily life. Instantly the picture of
that life lost its brightness and colouring, and her world appeared to
her a very dreary smudge of endless toil. Yes, Alice had sounded the
keynote, and Prudence's heart had responded with the chord in
sympathy. She knew now that she loved George Iredale.

This realization was not wholly pleasurable, for with it came a sudden
grip of fear at her simple heart. Her thoughts went back to some
eight months before. And she found herself again looking into the
death-chamber at the Leonville school-house. That scene had no
longer power to move her; at least not in the way one might have
expected. She no longer loved the dead man; he had passed from her
thoughts as though she had never cared for him. But a new feeling had
sprung up in her heart which the realization of this indifference had
brought. And this feeling filled her with an utter self-loathing.
She shuddered as she thought of her own heartlessness, the shallow
nature which was hers. She remembered her feelings at that bedside
as she listened to the dying man's last words. Worst of all, she
remembered how, in the paroxysm of her grief, she had sworn to
discover the murderer of Leslie Grey and see justice administered. Now
she asked herself, What had she done? And the answer came in all its
callous significance--Nothing!

She roused herself; her face was very pale. Her thoughts framed
themselves into unspoken words.

"If this is the way I have fulfilled my promise to the dead, if this
is the extent and depth of my love, then I am the most worthless woman
on earth. What surety can I give that my love for George is a better
thing than was my affection for Leslie Grey?"

She sat herself up, she looked over at her companion and noted the
drooping eyelids. Her features were strangely set, and her smooth
forehead wore a disfiguring frown. Then she spoke in a sharp tone that
startled the girl beside her.

"Alice, do you think it is possible to imagine you are in love with a
man--I mean, that you honestly believe you love him at the time and
really do not?"

Alice endeavoured to collect her wandering thoughts.

"Why, yes, I suppose so. I've been in love with a dozen men at one
time and another, never longer than a month with any one of