he world
accepts accomplished facts, especially if things go well, as they will
do, for that invention must succeed. No one else? Yes; three others. He
would remember, however much he loved me, for I should have brought him
to do a shameful act. And she would remember, whom I had robbed of her
husband, coming into his life after he had promised himself to her. Last
of all--most of all, perhaps--I myself should remember, day by day, and
hour by hour, that I was nothing more than one of the family of thieves.

"No; I will have none of such philosophy; at least I, Stella Fregelius,
will live and die among the upright. So I go to my cold marriage, such
as it is; so I bend my back to the burden, so I bow my head to the
storm; and throughout it all I thank God for what he has been pleased to
send me. I may seem poor, but how rich I am who have been dowered with a
love that I know to be eternal as my eternal soul. I go, and my husband
shall receive me, not with a lover's kiss and tenderness, but with words
few and sad, with greetings that, almost before their echoes die, must
fade into farewells. I wrap no veil about my head, he will set no ring
upon my hand, perchance we shall plight no troth. So be it; our hour of
harvest is not yet.

"Yesterday was very sharp and bleak, with scuds of sleet and snow driven
by the wind, but as I drove here with my father I saw a man and a woman
in the midst of an empty, lifeless field, planting some winter seed.
Who, looking at them, who that did not know, could foretell the fruits
of their miserable, unhopeful labour? Yet the summer will come and the
sweet smell of the flowering beans, and the song of the nesting birds,
and the plentiful reward of the year crowned with fatness. It is a
symbol of this marriage of mine. To-day we sow the seed; next, after a
space of raving rains and winds, will follow the long, white winter
of death, then some dim, sweet spring of awakening, and beyond it the
fulness of all joy.

"What is there about me that it would make me ashamed that he should
know; this husband to whom I must tell nothing? I cannot think. No other
man has been anything to me. I can remember no great sin. I have worked,
making the best of such gifts as I possess. I have tried to do my duty,
and I will do it to the end. Surely my heart is whole and my hands are
clean. Perhaps it is a sin that I should have learned to love him; that
I should look to a far future where I may be with him. If