f my ambition, the great adventure of my
boyhood, lay in my grasp.

With the telegram still in my hand, I went up the staircase, and entered
the bedroom where Sally was lying, with wide, bright eyes, in the
dimness.

"It's good news," I said, as I bent over her, "there's only good news
to-day."

She looked up at me with that searching brightness I had seen when she
gazed straight beyond me for the help that I could not give.

"It means going away from everything I have ever known," she said
slowly; "it means leaving you, Ben."

"It means never leaving me again in your life," I replied; "not for a
day--not for an hour."

"You will go, too?" she asked, and the faint wonder in her face pierced
to my heart.

"Do you think I'd be left?" I demanded.

Her eyes filled and as she turned from me, a tear fell on my hand.

"But your work, your career--oh, no, no, Ben, no."

"You are my career, darling, I have never in my heart had any career but
you. What I am, I am yours, Sally, but there are things that I cannot
give you because they are not mine, because they are not in me. These
are the things that were George's."

Lifting my hand she kissed it gently and let it fall with a gesture that
expressed an acquiescence in life rather than a surrender to love.

"I've sometimes thought that if I hadn't loved you first, Ben--if I
could ever have changed, I should have loved George," she said, and
added very softly, like one who seeks to draw strength from a radiant
memory, "but I had already loved you once for all, I suppose, in the
beginning."

"I am yours, such as I am," I returned. "Plain I shall always be--plain
and rough sometimes, and forgetful to the end of the little things--but
the big things are there as you know, Sally, as you know."

"As I know," she repeated, a little sadly, yet with the pathetic courage
in her voice; "and it is the big things, after all, that I've wanted
most all my life."

Then she shook her head with a smile that brought me to my knees at her
side.

"You've forgotten the railroad," she said. "You've forgotten the
presidency of the South Midland--that's what _you_ wanted most."

My laugh answered her. "Hang the presidency of the South Midland!" I
responded gaily.

Her brows went up, and she looked at me with the shadow of her old
charming archness. By this look I knew that the spirit of the Blands
would fight on, though always with that faint wonder. Then her eyes fell
on the crump