worked up to some
wonderful pitch of self-sacrifice and drama. They so seldom tell of the
flatness of the afterwards. The impossibility of retaining a balance on
this high pinnacle of moral valor, where circumstance, which is a
commonplace and often material thing, decrees that the lights shall not
be turned out with the ring-down of the curtain.

Unless death finishes what is apparently the last act, there is always
the to-morrow to be reckoned with--out of the story-book. So while
exalted--he by his sudden worship of that pure sweetness of soul in
Theodora which he had discovered, she by her innocence and desire to do
right--they had been able to tune their minds to an idea of a tender
good-bye, full of sentiment and vows of abstract devotion, and adherence
to duty.

And if he had gone to the ends of the earth that night the exaltation,
as a memory, might have continued, and time might have healed their
hurts--time and the starvation of absence and separation. But fate had
decreed they should meet again, and soon; and all the forces which
precipitate matters should be employed for their undoing.

For all else in life Hector was no weakling. He had always been a strong
man, physically and morally.

His views were the views of the world. It seemed no great sin to him to
love another man's wife. All his friends did the same at one period or
another.

It was only when Theodora had awakened him that he had begun even to
think of controlling himself.

It was to please her, not because he was really convinced of the right
and necessity of their course of action, that he had said good-bye and
agreed to worship her in the abstract.

He had been highly moved and elevated by her that night in Paris. And
when he wrote the letter his honest intention had been to follow its
words.

He did not recognize the fact that without the zeal of blind faith as to
the right, human nature must always yield to inclination.

So they sat there and ate their supper, and forgot to-morrow, and were
radiantly happy.

As they had gone down the stairs Monica Ellerwood had joined Lady
Bracondale in the gallery above.

"Oh! Look, Aunt Milly!" she had said. "Hector is with the American I
told you about in Paris. Do you see, going down to supper. Oh, isn't she
pretty! and what jewels--look!"

And Lady Bracondale had moved forward in a manner quite foreign to her
usual dignity to catch sight of them.

"It is the same woman he talked to at