e lost
dream looked up at him from the paper.

They gave him back himself. A thousand details of the past rushed upon
him in a galloping army.

"Lady Denin, widow of Captain Sir John Denin," he read. "She is shown
in this photograph in her presentation dress, as Miss Barbara Fay."

Barbara had disliked the photograph. He could see it now, in a silver
frame on her mother's writing desk, in the drawing-room of the little
furnished house taken for the season in London. He had been shown into
that room when he made his first call. Mrs. Fay had asked him to come,
just when he was wondering how to get the invitation. And Mrs. Fay had
given him one of those photographs. It occurred to him that she must
also have given one to the newspaper. Barbara would not have wished it
to be published. But he had thought it beautiful, and he thought it
more than ever beautiful now.

His wife--no, his widow! That was what the paper said: "Lady Denin,
widow of Captain Sir John Denin." What would she do, what would she
say, if she could see the wreck of John Denin, in a German hospital in
Belgium, staring hungrily at her picture?

He asked himself this, and answered almost without hesitation. She was
so loyal, so fine, that she would not grudge him his life. She would
even try, perhaps, to think she was glad that he lived. Yet she could
not in her secret heart, be glad. Such gladness would not be natural to
human nature. She had been hurried into marrying him, partly because he
loved her and was going away to fight, partly because her mother urged
it as the best solution of her difficulties. Now, all things Mrs. Fay
had wanted for the girl were hers without the one drawback; the plain,
dull fellow who had to be taken with them--the fly in the ointment, the
pill in the jam. Barbara had dearly loved the old black and white
house. She had said so a dozen times. She had never once said that she
loved John Denin. She had only smiled and been kind, and looked at him
in a baffling way, with that mysterious message in her eyes which he
had been too stupid to read. Mrs. Fay had loved the house too, and the
whole place; and it was hard to believe in looking back, that she had
not loved the money, and the idea of a title for her beautiful girl.

John Denin, who ought to have died and had not died, asked himself what
was now the next best thing to do. Also he asked the eyes in the
photograph, but they seemed gently to evade his eyes, just as they ha