new himself to be weak as water when that came
his way, the ten-thousandth face (and the figure to match)! He had
often prayed to Martia to deliver him from such a lure. But here was
Martia on the side of the too sweet enemy!

The train stopped for a few minutes at Neanderthal, and he thought
he could think better if he got out and walked in that beautiful
valley an hour or two--there was no hurry; he would take another
train later, in time to meet Julia at Beresford Duff's, where she
was sure to be. So he walked among the rocks, the lonely rocks, and
sat and pondered in the famous cave where the skull was found--that
simple prehistoric cranium which could never have been so
pathetically nonplussed by such a dilemma as this when it was a
human head!

And the more he pondered the less he came to a conclusion. It seemed
as though there were the "tug of war" between Martia and all that he
felt to be best in himself--his own conscience, his independence as
a man, his sense of honor. He took her letter out of his pocket to
re-read, and with it came another letter; it was from my sister, Ida
Maurice. It told him when they would arrive in Duesseldorf.

He jumped up in alarm--it was that very day. He had quite forgotten!

He ran off to the station, and missed a train, and had to wait an
hour for another; but he got himself to the Rhine station in
Duesseldorf a few minutes before the train from Belgium arrived.

Everything was ready for the Gibson party--lodgings and tea and
supper to follow--he had seen to all that before; so there he walked
up and down, waiting, and still revolving over and over again in his
mind the troublous question that so bewildered and oppressed him.
Who was Martia? what was she--that he should take her for a guide in
the most momentous business of his life; and what were her
credentials?

And what was love? Was it love he felt for this young goddess with
yellow hair and light-blue eyes so like his own, who towered in her
full-blown frolicsome splendor among the sons and daughters of men,
with her moist, ripe lips so richly framed for happy love and
laughter--that royal milk-white fawn that had only lain in the roses
and fed on the lilies of life?

"Oh, Mr. Nobody of Nowhere! be at least a man; let no one ever call you
the basest thing an able-bodied man can become, a fortune-hunting
adventurer!"

Then a bell rang, and the smoke of the coming train was visible--ten
minutes late. The tickets we