ng
it, but I will not accept your sacrifice, Kathryn, I will not ask for
forgiveness. When I come home, if you still love me, I will devote my
life to you. We will start afresh--the whole world will."

"You are going at once?" Kathryn clutched at what was eluding her.

"Yes, my dear."

"And you won't marry me? Won't--prove to me?"

"No."

"Oh! how can you leave me to think----"

"Think what, Kathryn?"

"Oh! things--about her. It would be such a proof of what you've just
said--if only you would marry me now."

"Kathryn, I cannot. I am--I wish that you could understand--I am
stepping out into the dark. I must go alone."

"That is absurd, Brace. Absurd." A baffled, desperate note rang in
Kathryn's voice. It was not for Northrup, but for her first sense of
failure. Then she looked up. All the resentment gone from her face,
she was the picture of despair.

"I will wait for you, Brace. I will prove to you what a woman's real
love is!"

So, cleverly, did she bind what she intuitively felt was the highest
in Northrup. And he bent and laid his lips on the smooth girlish
forehead, sorrowfully realizing how little he had to offer.

A few moments later Northrup found himself on the street. The snow was
falling thicker, faster. It had the smothering quality that is so
mysterious. People thudded along as if on padded feet; the lights were
splashed with clinging flakes and gleamed yellow-red in the whiteness.
Sounds were muffled; Northrup felt blotted out.

He loved the sensation--it was like a great, absorbing Force taking
him into its control and erasing forever the bungling past. He
purposely drifted for an hour in the storm. He was like a moving part
of it, and when at last he reached home, he stood in the vestibule for
many moments extricating himself--it was more that than shaking the
snow off. He felt singularly free.

Once within the house, he went directly to his mother's room. She was
lying on a couch by the fire. In the shelter of her warm, quiet place
Helen seemed to have gained what Brace had won in the storm. She was
smiling, almost eager.

"Yes, dear?" she said.

Northrup sat down in the chair that was his by his mother's hearth.

"Kathryn wanted to marry me, Mother, at once."

"That would be like her, bless her heart!"

"I could not accept the sacrifice, Mother."

"That would be like you--but is it a sacrifice?"

"It seems so to me."

"You see, son, to many women this is the supreme offeri