.
It is best so, for I would not have you hampered by a single regret
in your enjoyment of the happiness that the future holds for you.

"You owe me nothing, although I have given you all--and gloried in
the giving. For you at least vouchsafed me, through barred windows,
a glimpse into the sanctuary where such as I may not enter. I
realize now that it was impossible for me to have ever entered into
the holy of holies; and yet, dear, can you blame me for hoping?

"I know now that I could never have entered fully into your life;
the clay of my being leans too awry for that. But am I to blame for
the shaking of the Potter's hand? I sought with all the assiduity
of a weak woman's love, but there was a door to which I never
found the key, a veil behind which I could not peer. Yet to me was
given the rapture of the outer temple--and it was the bread of
life.

"Be generous to me in this, the hour of my bitter atonement, and
believe that my love was as pure and unselfish as it is possible
for a woman to give. The proof of it is that I am giving you up now
when I know that by a little finesse I could pull you down to hell
with me. For I have spilled the Red Wine for you, my Wolf, and the
reek of it would have been a bond and heel-rope between us.

"It is because of my love for you that I am giving you up, giving
you into the hands of another woman. I have been but a flame to
you, burning out the dross from your nature so that she might pour
into her heart's crucible only the pure gold. God grant she mold
the chalice aright.

"And now farewell while I have yet strength to say it. Forget me if
you can. But if from the heights you ever look backward and
downward, and in the sea of memory catch one faint reflection of
me, let the thought be a kindly one.

"For oh, Man, who was more than God to me, I loved you too well!"

Very reverently he kissed the letter, then burned it in the flame of the
smoky lamp. It was a long and weary ride to the nearest telegraph office
at Gunnison, yet he never dismounted from his staggering horse until he
heard the clicking of the sounders in the dingy little office.

"My life is yours alone," he wrote firmly; "let me make amends. Will you
mold the chalice?"

Feverishly he strode up and down his apartment at the hotel until her
answering wire was