nquered for him,
spoken for him, vouched for him--perhaps pleaded for him!--he shivered,
and suddenly he realised that this golden voice was, in fact, all there
was to him.

What had he to identify him on earth among mankind? Only his money.
Wherein did he differ from other men? He had more money. What had he to
offer as excuse for living at all? Money. What had he done? Lived on it,
by it. Why, then, it was the money that was entitled to distinction, and
he figured only as its parasite! Then he was nothing--even a little
less. In the world there was man and there was money. It seemed that he
was a little lower in the scale than either; a parasite--scarcely a
thing of distinction to offer Kathleen Severn.

Very seriously he looked up at the moon.

It was the day following his somewhat disordered and impassioned
declaration. He expected to receive his answer that evening; and he
descended the mountain in a curiously uncertain and perplexed state of
mind which at times bordered on a modesty painfully akin to humbleness.

Meanwhile, Duane was preparing to depart on the morrow. And that evening
he also was to have his definite answer to the letter which Kathleen had
taken to Geraldine Seagrave that morning.

"Dear," he had written, "I once told you that my weakness needed
the aid of all that is best in you; that yours required the best of
courage and devotion that lies in me. It is surely so. Together we
conquer the world--which is ourselves.

"For the little things that seem to threaten our separation do not
really alarm me. Even if I actually committed the inconsequential
and casual thing that so abruptly and so deeply offended you, there
remains enough soundness in me at the core to warrant your charity
and repay, in a measure, your forgiveness and a renewal of your
interest in my behalf.

"Search your heart, Geraldine; question your intelligence; both will
tell you that I am enough of a man to dare love you. And it takes
something of a man to dare do it.

"There is a thing that I might say which would convince you, even
against the testimony of your own eyes, that never in deed or in
thought have I been really disloyal to you since you gave me your
heart.... Yet I must not say it.... Can you summon sufficient faith
in me to accept that statement--against the evidence of those two
divine witnesses which condemn me--your eyes? Circumstant