ruths I now see so clearly.

"And then the other woman suddenly came into my life. I never expected
to love again--not because I thought it impossible, but because I
thought it improbable in my little world here that I could ever again
meet a woman I would ask to be my wife. But she dropped one day out of
the sky."

He paused and took a deep breath.

"I recognized her instantly as my mate, gentle and pure and capable
of infinite joy or infinite pain. She did not realize the secret of my
interest in her. I didn't expect it. I knew that under the conditions
she could not. But I waited."

He paused and searched for Mary's eyes.

"And you married her?" she asked in even tones.

"I have never allowed her to know that I love her."

"Why?"

"She was married."

Mary threw him a startled look and he went on evenly:

"I could have used my power over mind and body to separate her from
her husband. I confess that I was tempted. But there was a child. Their
union had been sealed with the strongest tie that can bind two human
beings. I have never allowed her to realize that she might love me. Had
I chosen to break the silence between us I could have revealed this to
her, taken her and torn her from the man to whom she had borne a babe.
I had no right to commit that crime, no matter how deep the love that
cried for its own. Marriage is based on the period of infancy of the
child which spans the maternal life of woman. God had joined these two
people together and no man had the right to put them asunder!"

"And you gave her up?"

"I had to, little mother. On the recognition of this eternal law the
whole structure of our civilization rests."

Mary bent her gaze steadily on his face for a moment in silence.

"And you are telling me that I should be reconciled to the man who
choked me into insensibility?"

"I am telling you that he is the father of your son--that he has rights
which you cannot deny; that when you gave yourself to him in the first
impulse of love a deed was done which Almighty God can never undo.
Your tragic blunder was the rush into marriage with a man about whose
character you knew so little. It's the timid, shrinking, home-loving
girl that makes this mistake. You must face it now. You are responsible
as deeply and truly as the man who married you. That he happened at that
moment to be a brute and a criminal is no more his fault than yours. It
was YOUR business to KNOW before you made him the father of