worth flung wide the door
and entered, Richard's ashen face showing over his shoulder. In her
brother's care Wilding delivered his mercifully unconscious wife. "See
to her, Dick," he said, and turned to go, mistrusting himself now.
But he paused as he reached the door, Wentworth waxing more and more
impatient at his elbow. He turned again.

"Dick," he said, "we might have been better friends. I would we had
been. Let us part so at least," and he held out his hand, smiling.

Before so much gallantry Richard was conquered almost to the point of
worship; a weak man himself, there was no virtue he could more admire
than strength. He left Ruth in the high-backed chair in which Wilding's
tender hands had placed her, and sprang forward, tears in his eyes. He
wrung Wilding's hands in wordless passion.

"Be good to her, Dick," said Wilding, and went out with Wentworth.

He was marched down the street in the centre of that small party of
musketeers of Dunbarton's regiment, his thoughts all behind him rather
than ahead, a smile on his lips. He had conquered at the last. He
thought of that other parting of theirs, nearly a month ago, on the road
by Walford. Now, as then, circumstance was the fire that had melted her.
But the crucible was no longer--as then of pity; it was the crucible of
love.

And in that same crucible, too, Anthony Wilding's nature had undergone a
transmutation; his love for Ruth had been purified of that base alloy of
desire which had driven him into the unworthiness of making her his own
at all costs; there was no carnal grossness in his present passion; it
was pure as a religion--the love that takes no account of self, the love
that makes for joyous and grateful martyrdom. And a joyous and grateful
martyr would Anthony Wilding have been could he have thought that his
death would bring her happiness or peace. In such a faith as that he had
marched--or so he thought blithely to his end, and the smile on his lips
had been less wistful than it was. Thinking of the agony in which he had
left her, he almost came to wish--so pure was his love grown--that he
had not conquered. The joy that at first was his was now all dashed. His
death would cause her pain. His death! O God! It is an easy thing to be
a martyr; but this was not martyrdom; having done what he had done he
had not the right to die. The last vestige of the smile that he had worn
faded from his tight-pressed lips tight-pressed as though to endure some