rive the shadow from Gethsemane and
the cup has never since been absent from my lips.'

"Angus stopped--and God watched over me; for He pitied me.

"I thought of you and mother first, but God still kept my will in His. I
wanted God to lead me and I asked Him to help me--and I waited.

"'Angus,' I said at last, 'your mother loved him, did she not?'

"'Loved!' he answered, 'her pure heart knew no other passion. My own is
but an echo. Behold! I was shapen in love.'

"'Then,' said I, 'let her that is without love cast the first stone at
her. If any sinning woman love, she has an advocate with the Father. Oh,
Angus! Come to me!' I cried, for I was fainting."

* * * * *

Her story was finished now and my daughter added not a word. But she
arose and stood before me, her eyes searching my pallid face for a
verdict, if haply it might be like her own. I noticed the woman's
tactics in her move, for woman's genius makes its home within her soul;
she had left my arms that I might, if I would, hold them out to her
again and take her back forever. But the arms have their hinges in the
heart and mine was tight locked like a vise.

"Margaret," I said at last, and my voice was like the voice of age, "you
do not mean that you suffered this man's caresses after he told you what
you have just told me?"

Sorrow looked from Margaret's eyes.

"Suffered!" she replied, "suffered! I have learned what suffering is,
God knows, but He knows it was not there I learned it. 'This man.' Oh,
father, I love him--am I all alone?"

How strong is the weakness of love! There is no panoply like that which
love provides, and she who bears it has the whole armour of God.

"Margaret," I pleaded, "you surely will not ruin your life and break
your mother's heart and mine by any madness such as this."

"'Ruin my life,' father! what ruin can there be to the life that loves
and is loved? I have no life at all apart from him. It seems so simple.
I can't take back my heart!"

"Perhaps so, my daughter," I replied, "perhaps so. I know your love is
no fickle thing. But Margaret, you do not propose to link your life with
his, shadowed as you yourself declare it to have been from his birth?"

"Father, it is already linked. It was not I who linked our lives, nor
was it he; nor was it both together--it was God. Surely He wouldn't have
let me love and trust, if it was wrong. I want you to help me; I am all
alone."

"But you do n