woke to find yourself on your own bed?"

"Duane!" It was a cry of terror.

"Dearest! Dearest! Do you think I have not known--since then--what has
troubled you--here----"

She stared at him in crimsoned horror for an instant, then with a dry
sob, bowed her head and covered her face with desperate hands. For a
moment her whole body quivered, then she collapsed. On his knees beside
her he bent and touched with trembling lips her arms, her knees, the
slim ankles desperately interlocked, the tips of her white shoes.

"Dearest," he whispered brokenly, "I know--I know--believe me. I have
fought through worse, and won out. You said once that something had died
out in me--while I was abroad. It did not die of itself, dear. But it
left its mark.... You say self-control is only depravity afraid.... That
is true; but I have made my depravity fear me. I can do what I please
with it now; I can tempt it, laugh at it, silence it. But it cost me
something to make a slave of it--what you saw in my face is the
claw-mark it left fighting me to the death."

Very straight on his knees beside her he bent again, pressing her rigid
knees with his lips.

"I need you, Geraldine--I need all that is best in you; you must love
me--take me as an ally, dear, against all that is worst in you. I'll
love you so confidently that we'll kill it--you and I together--my
strength and yours, my bitter and deep understanding and your own sweet
contempt for weakness wherever it may be, even in yourself."

He touched her; and she shuddered under the light caress, still bent
almost double, and covering her face with both hands. He bent over her,
one knee on the divan.

"Let's pull ourselves together and talk sense, Geraldine," he said with
an effort at lightness.

"Don't you remember that bully little girl who swung her fists in single
combat and uppercut her brother and me whenever her sense of fairness
was outraged? The time has come when you, who were so fair to others,
are going to be fair to yourself by marrying me----"

She dropped both hands and stared at him out of wide, tear-wet eyes.

"Fair to myself--at your expense, Duane?"

"What do you mean? I love you."

"Am I to let you--you marry me--knowing--what you know? Is that what you
call my sense of fairness?" And, as he attempted to speak:

"Oh, I have thought about it already!--I must have been conscious that
this would happen some day--that--that I was capable of caring for
you--and it a