she
promised, wildly; "Kenneth, it is you I want to save; it is the last
thing I shall ever ask of you. Go, go! no more harm shall come to your
people, I promise you, I--"

"You promise!" and he turned on her with a fury from which she shrank.
"The promise of a woman who allowed a loyal friend to suffer disgrace
for her fault!--the promise of one who has abused the affection and
hospitality of the women you assure protection for! A spy! A traitor!
_You_, the woman I worshipped! God! What cursed fancy led you to risk
life, love, honor, everything worth having, for a fanatical fight
against one of two political factions?"

He dropped into a chair and buried his face in his hands. As he did so
a handkerchief in his pocket caught in the fastening of his cuff, as
he let his hand fall the 'kerchief was dragged from the pocket, and
with it the little oval frame over which he had been jealous for an
hour, and concerning which he had not yet had an explanation.

It rolled towards her, and with a sudden movement she caught it, and
the next instant the dark, girlish face lay uncovered in her hand.

She uttered a low cry, and then something of strength seemed to come
to her as she looked at it. Her eyes dilated, and she drew a long
breath, as she turned and faced him again with both hands clasped over
her bosom, and the open picture pressed there. All the tears and
pleading were gone from her face and voice, as she answered:

"Because to that political question there is a background, shadowed,
shameful, awful! Through the shadows of it one can hear the clang of
chains; can see the dumb misery of fettered women packed in the holds
of your slave ships, carried in chains to the land of your free! From
the day the first slave was burned at the stake on Manhattan Island by
your Christian forefathers, until now, when they are meeting your men
in battle, fighting you to the death, there is an unwritten record
that is full of horror, generations of dumb servitude! Did you think
they would keep silence forever?"

He arose from the chair, staring at her in amazement; those arguments
were so foreign to all he had known of the dainty woman, patrician,
apparently, to her finger tips. How had she ever been led to
sympathize with those rabid, mistaken theories of the North?

"You have been misled by extravagant lies!" he said, sternly; "abuses
such as you denounce no longer exist; if they ever did it was when the
temper of the times was