d been terribly burned--see?"

She loosened her black gown at the throat and pushed it down over her
right shoulder. Ralph shuddered at the deep, flaming scars.

"My arm is worse," she said, quickly covering her shoulder again. "I
need not show you that. My face was burned, too, but scarcely at all.
To this day, I do not know how I escaped. I must have thrown up my arm
instinctively to shield my face. See, there are no scars."

"I see," murmured Ralph; "and what of him?"

The dark eyes gleamed indescribably. "What of him?" she asked, with
assumed lightness. "Why, he was not hurt at all. I saved him from
disfigurement, if not from death. I bear the scars; he goes free."

"I know," said Ralph, "but why were you not married? All his life and
love would be little enough to give in return for that."

Miss Evelina fixed her deep eyes upon Anthony Dexter's son. In her
voice there was no hint of faltering.

"I never saw him again," she said, "until twenty-five years afterward,
and then I was veiled. He went away."

"Went away!" repeated Ralph, incredulously. "Miss Evelina, what do you
mean?"

"What I said," she replied. "He went away. He came once to the
hospital. As it happened, there was another girl there, named Evelyn
Grey, burned by acid, and infinitely worse than I. The two names
became confused. He was told that I would be disfigured for life--that
every feature was destroyed except my sight. That was enough for him.
He asked no more questions, but simply went away."

"Coward!" cried Ralph, his face white. "Cur!"

Miss Evelina's eyes gleamed with subtle triumph. "What would you?" she
asked unemotionally. "He told me that day of the accident that it was
my soul he loved, and not my body, but at the test, he failed. Men
usually fail women, do they not, in anything that puts their love to
the test? He went away. In a year, he was married, and he has a son."

"A son!" repeated Ralph. "What a heritage of disgrace for a son! Does
the boy know?"

There was a significant silence. "I do not think his father has told
him," said Evelina, with forced calmness.

"If he had," muttered Ralph, his hands clenched and his teeth set, "his
son must have struck him dead where he stood. To accept that from a
woman, and then to go away!"

"What would you?" asked Evelina again. A curious, tigerish impulse was
taking definite shape in her. "Would you have him marry her?"

"Marry her? A thousand