orted image of
his conduct. He had really acted the part of a prudent and conscientious
man; he was perfectly justifiable at every step: but in the retrospect
those steps which we can perfectly justify sometimes seem to have cost
so terribly that we look back even upon our sinful stumblings with
better heart. Heaven knows how such things will be at the last day; but
at that moment there was no wrong, no folly of his youth, of which
Elmore did not think with more comfort than of this passage in which he
had been so wise and right.

Of course the time came when he saw it all differently again; when his
wife persuaded him that he had done the best that any one could do with
the responsibilities that ought never to have been laid on a man of his
temperament and habits; when he even came to see that Lily's feeling was
a matter of pure conjecture with him, and that so far as he knew she had
never cared anything for Ehrhardt. Yet he was glad to have her away; he
did not like to talk of her with his wife; he did not think of her if he
could help it.

They heard from time to time through her sister that her little
enterprise in Omaha was prospering, and that she was very contented out
West; at last they heard directly from her that she was going to be
married. Till then, Elmore had been dumbly tormented in his sombre moods
with the solution of a problem at which his imagination vainly
toiled,--the problem of how some day she and Ehrhardt should meet again
and retrieve the error of the past for him. He contrived this encounter
in a thousand different ways by a thousand different chances; what he so
passionately and sorrowfully longed for accomplished itself continually
in his dreams, but only in his dreams.

In due course Lily married, and from all they could understand, very
happily. Her husband was a clergyman, and she took particular interest
in his parochial work, which her good heart and clear head especially
qualified her to share with him. To connect her fate any longer with
that of Ehrhardt was now not only absurd, it was improper; yet Elmore
sometimes found his fancy forgetfully at work as before. He could not at
once realize that the tragedy of this romance, such as it was, remained
to him alone, except perhaps as Ehrhardt shared it. With him, indeed,
Elmore still sought to fret his remorse and keep it poignant, and his
final failure to do so made him ashamed. But what lasting sorrow can one
have from the disappointm