The Cottage of Delight: A Novel

"I see you are in earnest, and I'll tell you," Mrs. Trott said. "John, she finally married Joel, but she did it only out of gratitude and pity. She was grateful to him for helping me, do you understand? After you left, she actually looked on me as her mother, because—because I was yours. Then she pitied Joel because he was so unhappy without her. But, la me! the other day, when she found out that you were alive, no angel in heaven could have been happier. She tries to hide it—she hardly knows what it means—but she can't hide it. It shows in her face, in her laugh, in her dancing movements. She has no idea she will ever see you again, and she doesn't dream of leaving Joel or the children, but knowing that you are alive and doing well has made her blissfully happy. Hers is a great, unselfish love, if there ever was one.

"You can't mean what you say," John faltered, his eyes beaming, his face aflame, his breast heaving.

"Yes, I do," his mother assured him. "I don't know that I'm doing exactly right to tell you, but I have told you. I can't fully make her out on one thing, and that is whether she believes you still care for her or not. Sometimes I think she believes that you still love her. I don't know why she is so happy unless that is at the bottom of it."

CHAPTER XII

She listened to him attentively, a warm stare of maternal pride in her meek eyes, but when he paused she slowly shook her head. She seemed embarrassed; then she said: "I couldn't do that, John. You may think it odd of anybody, but I really wouldn't like a bustling life like that now. I've got a taste of this, and I think I'd rather keep it. Then I must be honest with you. I mustn't keep back anything. The truth is I don't want to leave Tilly and Joel and the children. I've got used to them, I reckon. I think they want me, too, I really do; at least I hope so. I've found this out, John; people either like one sort of life or the other. When I was living like—like I used to live, I wanted that and nothing else, but now I want this and nothing else. I wish you could live here, but you know best about that. It would be wrong in some ways, for, considering the way you and Tilly feel about each other, and her duty to Joel and the children, it wouldn't be best for you to be close together. I was thinking about that last night and wondering whether you and her ought to meet even once again. It seems to me that it would be awkward for you both, and hard on poor Joel."

"I had no idea of—of meeting her," John said, in a tone which sank beneath his breath. "I must spare her that."

"It is a pity—a pity, but it will be best!" Mrs. Trott sighed. "I wish I could see some other way, but I can't. How long are you going to stay?"

"Not longer than a week," he answered. "Are you sure that you won't go with me?"

She slowly shook her head. "No, I must stay here, John. I couldn't leave them— I really couldn't. They have wound themselves about my tired old heart and I want to stay near them. I wish I could help them out of their terrible poverty. The children ought to be educated. They are wonderfully bright."

They sat without speaking for several minutes; then John said, suddenly: "Do you think we could, between us, devise any way by which I might help them substantially? I assure you I have plenty of money for which I have no need."

"Oh, that would never do, John!" Mrs. Trott exclaimed. "Neither Joel nor Tilly would accept it. That is out of the question."

John's face fell. "I was afraid you'd say that," he sighed. Then, with a start and an eager searching of her face, he said: "Will you answer me a direct question? If you, yourself, were to come into some money, at your death would you want them to have it?"

"Why, of course!" she answered. "That is all I'd want money for now."

"Then the way is clear," John beamed, and his voice throbbed with excitement. "You are my mother. You can't keep me from making you comfortable out of my useless means. I have some absolutely safe securities that bring in good dividends. Before I return to New York they will be in your name at one of the banks in town, with a cash deposit to your credit. The income on the stocks amounts to about three thousand a year. Remember, I am in no way suggesting to you what you should do with the principal or the interest, but legally to be on the safe side, you ought at once to make a will."

"Why, John— John, you astound me!" his mother cried. "Mr. Cavanaugh intimated that you were not particularly well off, and here you say—you say that I am to have three thousand dollars a year from you. Why—why—"

"It is nothing," he said, smiling. "I want to do it, and you must help me. If you should decide to do so, you can convert some of the stocks into money and buy Joel a farm on which he could make a good living. After I am gone they won't refuse it from you, for you owe it to them, considering all they have done for you."

Without knowing it, Mrs. Trott was weeping. Great crystal tears were on her cheeks. Her still beautiful lips were quivering; her slender hands were clasped in her lap.

"Oh, John, John, can it be possible to do this for them?" she half whimpered. "I want to do it. I want to help them, but poor Joel is so sensitive and proud that—that—"

"You owe it to him, and I, as your son, who left you unprotected, owe it to him also. When I am gone he will see that it had to be. Let him know about the will in his children's favor, but give him to understand that the money is from you, not from me, and tell him, too, if you can do so adroitly, that I shall never come this way again. This is his home, not mine. As for Til—as for his wife, I shall not meet her while I am here. You are going to help them substantially—that is the main thing. You, no one else."

"Oh, it would be glorious—glorious!" Mrs. Trott dried her eyes on her apron. "As for Tilly, Tilly—it may seem to you a strange idea of mine, John, but somehow I believe, actually believe that she would accept the money from you as readily as she'd give her last cent to you under the same circumstances. She is a strange, strange little woman, more of the next life, it seems to me, than this. She has been an angel of light to me and I couldn't leave her; even if you were an emperor offering me a throne I'd stay here. In taking your money, John, I am taking it on her account. She will see through your plan, but it will only make her the happier, for she thinks your soul and hers are united for all time, and it may be so, John—it may be so. Love like yours and hers ought not to die. How could it?"

He sat silent. All the morbid hauntings of his past seemed to be withdrawing like shadows before some vast supernal light. His body felt imponderable. A delicious pain clutched his throat and pierced his breast. He was ashamed of his weakness and tried to shake it off, but it continued to thrill and sob in every nook and cranny of his hitherto unexplored being. The woman before him seemed more than mere flesh, blood, and bone. A veritable nimbus hovered over her transfigured head and shone against the unbarked logs behind her.

CHAPTER XIII

Softly he moved away. Presently he came to a fallen tree and sat down on it. He could no longer hear the children's voices. However, another sound broke the stillness about him. It was the rapid tread of some one hurrying through the wood in his direction. The branches of the bushes in front of him parted and Tilly stood facing him, her cheeks and brow flushed and damp from rapid walking. That she could be so beautiful as now he had never dreamed possible. The years had added indescribable charm and grace to her every movement, feature, and expression.

"Oh, John!" she cried, holding out her hands as appealingly and naïvely as of old, "the children are lost! They started for your mother's cabin, but haven't been there. There are dangerous places in this wood, and—"

He smiled reassuringly as he took her hands. "They are all right," he said. "They are just over there. I saw them only a moment ago."

Their hands clung together, but neither of them was cognizant of the fact. It was as if not a day had elapsed since they had parted. Forgetting every law of propriety, he drew her into his arms. Her uncovered head went as of old to his shoulder, and he was about to kiss her throbbing lips when, with her hand to his mouth, she suddenly checked him.

"No, no, John!" she said, and she disengaged herself from his embrace with a firm, resolute movement. "I understand how you feel, but you mustn't— I mustn't. I want to—yes, yes, I want to kiss you, but it would be wrong."

"Yes, it would be wrong," he groaned, and turned white. He sat down on the trunk of the tree. She stood before him. Neither spoke for a while, and the prattling voices of the children sounded on the warm, still air.

"I'm afraid I have pained you," Tilly said, after a moment, and she put her hand on his shoulder as if to make him look at her. "I wish I knew some other way, but I know of none."

"There is no other way," he declared, his hungry eyes now on her face, the marvel of which still held him enthralled. In all his dreams of her she had never appeared so transcendently wonderful.

"How could she ever have been mine—actually mine?" he asked himself from the abyss into which he was sinking.

"You see," she went on, now taking his hand into hers, "I'd have to tell Joel. I'm his wife, the mother of his children, and there can be nothing in my life that is not open to him. He is the soul of honor, John."

"I know it," John answered, simply.

"This thing is killing him, John," she went on, rapidly, as if taking no heed of what she was saying. "The world was against him, anyway, and the news of your being here so prosperous and successful by contrast to himself has bowed his head to the earth. I don't know what to do or what to say. He knows how I feel. You see, I couldn't hide from him the joy I felt when I heard you were living. I can bear anything now—anything! You see, Joel thinks that you—he has no reason for thinking so, of course, for you have lived up there and he here—but he thinks—it is stupid of him—but he thinks that you feel—exactly the same toward me as you did when we were married. Exactly! Exactly!"

"It wouldn't take a wise man to know that," John said, bitterly, his lips awry, his stare dull with agony.

"You mean to say that you do?" Tilly urged, her little hand pressing his spasmodically, her eyes glistening with moisture.

He nodded slowly. "How could I help it? You have done nothing to alter my feeling toward you except to deepen it. How can I overlook the fact that you befriended my mother (after I deserted her) and made her what she now is?"

"That was nothing but my duty, and my love for her," Tilly answered. She paused for a moment, and went on:

"Then you don't blame me for marrying again?" This was tremulously uttered, and the speaker's eyes were now downcast.

"No, I expected it. In a way, you owed it to Joel. In fact, I owe him more now than I can ever repay."

Tilly released his hand and sat down on the log beside him. Her little feet were thrust out from her, and he saw her poor tattered shoes and noted the coarse dress she wore.

"I've always wanted to know one thing," she faltered. "A thousand times after the report of your death I wondered if you died understanding how it was that I left you. Did you know why I left our little home so suddenly, John?"

"Why, to escape the awful scandal that was in the air; but what is the good of bringing that up now?"

"Ah, I see, you didn't quite know the truth," Tilly cried. "John, my father was practically out of his mind that day. He died not long afterward of softening of the brain. He had a revolver, and would have shot you if he had met you. I was expecting you home every minute, and when I saw that I could pacify him by going right back with him I did it."

"Oh, I see!" A great light broke on John. "Then it was really to save my life."

"As I saw it, yes," Tilly replied. "I wrote to you once, after I got to Cranston, but I learned afterward that father stopped the letter. I was kept like a prisoner at home, John, until the court, under my father's influence, and a narrow-minded jury had annulled our marriage. In spite of that, I was ready to go to you and only waiting for a chance, when the news of your death came. I didn't blame you for leaving. I knew that you did it in despair of any other solution, and also to help poor little Dora. That was a glorious thing to do, and God blessed your effort. How is she, John?"

"Well, and happy—both of them. I had a letter yesterday. They like their work and believe they are doing good."

"And you did that, John—you did it. When your own troubles were greatest, you thought of that poor child. It was the noblest thing a man ever did."

John shrugged his shoulders. "It was selfish enough. I needed a companion, and she became one. For years we were like real brother and sister."

"And then she left you all alone," Tilly sighed. "Oh, John, John, the world has been unkind to you! You see, I have my children. Only a mother can know what that means. I don't hear their voices now. Will you show me where they were?"

He led her through the wood to the glade. A great deadening chagrin was on him. He told himself that she had suddenly bethought herself of the need of the protection of her children's presence. Parting the bushes on the edge of the glade, he looked around and presently espied them asleep in the shade of a tree. Little Tilly's head lay on a heap of flowers and ferns, and Joel lay coiled on the grass at her feet.

"They often do that," Tilly beamed up at John. "We needn't wake them yet—not just yet. I have a thousand things to say and ask, but my thoughts are all in a jumble. How strange it seems to be here like this with you again! I wonder, can there be any harm (in God's sight) in telling the simple, honest truth? I've never done a conscious wrong in my life, John. I did what I thought was right when I married you—when I left you to go home with my father—when I secretly visited your mother—when I finally married Joel—and now while I am here with you like this telling you that—that—"

She broke off, her all but etherealized face paling and growing more rigid.

He clutched her hands. He held them passionately, desperately to his breast. "Go on!" he panted. "For God's sake, go on! I am starving for a word from your lips. I've heard you speak a million times in my dreams. Night after night I've lived with you in our little cottage, only to wake and find it a damnable mockery, with nothing but the dull grind of life before me."

"What I say I would say to Joel's face if I could do so without killing him." Tilly smiled wistfully. "John, I don't believe a true woman can love but once in the way I loved you. She can many; she can have children when she thinks it can bring no harm to her dead lover, but, if she is a genuine woman, she will exult when that lover rises from the grave and stands before her again. Dear John, I could take your suffering face between my hands and kiss your lips as no woman ever kissed a man's lips before. Yes, I could do it, and I'd die to be able to do it again, but it is not to be. My body may not love, but my soul may, and it is an eternal thing, John, and so is your soul. Those children have a right to the care of a mother who is untainted in the sight of the world. Their poor, patient, unfortunate father deserves as clean a wife as the earth can produce. I know you love me— I know it. I feel it. I see it. But we've got to part. I believe in God. When I doubt God I suffer and am forced back to faith by the pain I feel. Believing in God, I also believe that the greater the cross put upon us the more patiently it must be borne. My cross is to live without you—yours is to live without me. But, oh, my heart aches—aches—aches for you! It seems to me that your burden will be heavier even than mine, for I have my children and you are all alone. John, John, you are young yet. Don't you think that if you were to marry some good girl and have children of your own—"

"No," he broke in, shuddering. "Leave that out! I couldn't do it—knowing your heart as I now know it."

"I see, I understand, and—yes, I'm glad. Oh, I can't help it, John. I'm glad. When do you leave here?"

"Very soon now—in a few days."

"How strange, oh, how strange!" she mused, aloud. "And after this—after this brief moment I am not to see you again, or hear from you—yes, I'll hear through your mother, for she tells me she is not to leave with you. How odd that is, too! Joel and I and the children have robbed you even of the mother who bore you. You never knew her as she now is, John, and that is a pity, too. In her rebirth she is as saintly as a consecrated nun. She does not know that she believes in God, but she does. There is a streak of doubt in her as there was in you. Are you still an unbeliever, John?"

He lowered his head, shrugged, and contracted his brows. "I don't like to say—to you, at least," he faltered. "Not to you, Tilly."

"But you may, John—it won't pain me at all. I used to think that the worst sinners were those who denied the existence of God, but I now think there may be persons so godlike that they can't realize the existence of any God outside of themselves. John, you are godlike. If I could think of you as sinning, I'd sin in that thought alone. Go on calling yourself an atheist, and the angels will treat it as a holy jest."

"I don't follow you," he said, wearily, as if he would dismiss the subject. "You are mistaken about me. I am just an average man. But I don't believe as you do. It may be beautiful—it no doubt is, but I can't grasp it. It never came my way, somehow."

The wood was very still. Under the beating sun, the wild flowers and tender leaves of plants were the shelter of myriads of moving things visible and invisible. Suddenly a locust sang in the top of a persimmon-tree. A crow flew cawing over a distant field. The rumble of a farmer's wagon was heard on the road. Tilly's face was steadily raised to John's. She put her hand on his arm, the arm she used to lean on so lovingly in their walks on the mountain road.

"You can live without conscious faith, John," she said, in the sweet treble tone he had loved so long, "but I cannot. If I doubted, as I did once when we thought Tilly was dying, I'd wither up in despair. You may as well know the truth. I live only for my children, John. Joel has to suffer in not having all my heart— I can't help that. He must suffer, too, because he makes no headway in life and is unable to provide well for me and his children. I can't help that, either. That is his cross and he is bearing it like a saint. But as for me, I have two things to live for—my children and your mother. God has put them in my hands and I must care for them. Do you think I could live without faith now? Why, I know God must help me care for them. I am praying for that. Night after night—day after day I plead with God to provide for those three. I want to see the children educated. I want to keep your mother as happy and peaceful as she now is. She is my mother now—she is also Joel's; she is the grandmother of my children. Don't you think my prayer will be answered, John?"

"I know it," he said, suddenly, recalling the compact just made with his mother. "I know it."

"Then you believe, too," she cried, eagerly, wonderingly.

"Yes, I believe that," he admitted, reluctantly. "Something will happen—something will turn up. You must never lose faith and hope."

Tilly looked up at the sun. "It is eleven o'clock at least," she said. "I must be going. I have to get Joel's dinner ready. I shall tell him about this, of course, and now"—she choked up—"this must be good-by. How can it be? It doesn't seem possible—that is, forever. For, if it were possible, the God I adore would be a fiend. We are going to meet in another life. As sure as you and I stand here loving each other as we do, we are going to be reunited. A stream of spirit will connect us even while alive. If it were otherwise, there'd be no law and order in the universe, and law and order are everywhere. Yes, we'll meet again, someway, somehow, somewhere."

She held out her hands. He took them into his. He was drawing her to him, the old fire of divine passion filling him, when he felt the muscles of her fingers stiffen defensively, and she turned her eyes to the sleeping children.

"No, no! No, my darling," she said, a fluttering sob in her throat, her eyes filling. "We must be honorable. Good-by. Leave me here with them, please. I'll let them sleep a moment longer and then take them home."

"Good-by," he said, turning away. The bending branches of the bushes came between her and him. Like a plodder who has become suddenly blind he staggered forward. The earth seemed to sink as he trod upon it. Wild-grape vines whipped his brow and cheeks. Stones slipped and rolled beneath his feet as he groped along. He was panting like a wild animal long and closely pursued.

He had turned away from the town's direction. He told himself that he could not just now meet Cavanaugh and his wife with the meaningless platitudes of daily life. A rugged, wooded hill rose before him. He paused, rested awhile, and then began to climb its steep side. Half-way to the summit, he stopped and looked about him.

There lay the growing town where his boyhood was spent. There loomed up the graveyard, with its ghostly slabs and shafts. There was the old house which had haunted his dreariest dreams, and there—yes, there was the cottage which had been the shrine of his sole joy in life. Drawn close together in perspective and full of meaning they stood—his House of Despair, and his Cottage of Delight. From both he tore his clinging gaze. Beyond his mother's cabin lay an undulating meadow and another log cabin. Along a narrow path walked a woman holding the hands of two children. Across the furrows of a corn-field to meet the three trudged a man without a coat, an ax on his shoulder. They met. The man took the younger child up in his arms, and the three others walked onward through the yellow veil of light.

The observer groaned, filled, and sobbed. Through a mist of unrestrainable tears he watched fixedly till the group had vanished in the cabin. Then he started toward the town.

CHAPTER XIV

"Mrs. Trott!" the woman cried. "Why do you call me that for the first time? Hasn't it been 'Grandmother Trott' all these years? Listen, Joel. You are too touchy for your own good. I am telling you about John because you ought to know it. You may be silly enough to think that he wants to come between you and Tilly, but he doesn't, and she wouldn't encourage it, even if he did. So that is the end of that. The next thing is my own business with you. Joel, John is better off than we had any idea of, and what do you think he has done? He has turned over to me in my name a big lot of stocks that bring in a fine income, and, besides that, he has placed to my credit in the bank several thousand dollars to invest as I like. I am a rich woman, now, Joel."

"Fine! Fine! Splendid! Splendid!" Joel cried, impulsively, and then his face began to settle back into perplexed rigidity as he sat and waited.

"Yes, it is fine," Mrs. Trott went on, "and what I want to see you about, Joel, is this: As you know, there are several splendid farms around here with good houses on them that are offered for sale. Now I want to buy one of them, and I want you to help me do it."

"I'll do anything I can," he answered, lamely, for he well knew that she had not finished what she had to say. "I am afraid that I am not a good business man, however, and that the judgment of others—"

"I really want the Louden farm," Mrs. Trott said. "Mr. Cavanaugh says it is a bargain. He built the big house that is on it and says that it was decidedly well made out of the best materials. It is a beautiful place, as you may know, with the fine spring and fruit and shade trees and stables and barn!"

"Yes, it is splendid in every way," Eperson said; "and you think that you can get it?"

She smiled broadly. "Through the lawyers I have already a binding option on it. The final papers will be signed to-day."

"But how can I help you?" Joel asked, still shrinkingly.

Mrs. Trott hesitated, as if to decide exactly how she should make her next move. Then, with a half-fearful smile, she said: "You remember, Joel, how you pleaded with me, just after you and Tilly were married, to come live with you and her?"

"Yes, for we wanted you—we've always wanted you to be closer to us."

"Well, I want to go to you now, Joel," was the slow reply. "I'm lonely. Another change seems to have come over me. I have learned to love the children so much that I am restless without them. Their little visits seem too short, and on rainy days and in the winter they can't come. Yes, I want to be with you all, and I am asking you to take me at last, Joel."

"Asking me—asking me?" he stammered, comprehending her trend in part. "Why, you know—you ought to know that I—that we—"

"Well, it is for you to take me or refuse me," Mrs. Trott put in, with a wistful smile. "I want to live on the farm. I can't manage it by myself and I want you to take charge of it for me—and let us all live in that big, fine house together."

"But I— Why, I—" Joel broke down again, his patrician face awry from sheer torture, and then sat twisting his gaunt hands over his ragged, quivering knee. "I see, it is good and kind of you, but—but— I don't see how I, myself, could possibly accept your offer."

"You have to, Joel," she retorted, still with her motherly smile. "You can't refuse a thing that will give me and your wife and children so much happiness."

"But I'd be on—on your son's bounty," Joel flashed from the very embers of his humiliation.

"Absurd!" exclaimed Mrs. Trott. "He says he owes you more than he ever could repay. He says you cared for me when he deserted me, and that you played the part of a man while he was a coward. But that is neither here nor there. Joel, I have willed all my new possessions to you and your wife and children. When I'm dead and gone you will have to have them, anyway, so why not make me happy the remainder of my life?"

He was unable to formulate a logical reply, but beneath the revelation she had made he sat limp and bruised as a flower drenched and beaten by abnormal rain and wind.

"Does Tilly know all this?" he asked, timidly, a cowed expression in his dull eyes.

"Yes, Joel, and she wants you to accept my plan. She will be happy when you do, for your sake and for the sake of the children."

He got up. His tanned face above his clean but frayed collar looked like the mask of some Indian chieftain thwarted in his last patriotic hope. His poor, underfed horse, in reaching for the grass near his bitted mouth, had drawn the reins beneath his hoofs and was about to break them.

"Excuse me," Joel said, and he went to the animal and tied up the reins. He came back. His face was still rigid, his lips were quivering.

"You wish it, you say," he faltered. "Tilly wants it, but how about your son? Would he care for me to share in the benefits of his gifts to you?"

Mrs. Trott deliberated for an instant, then she said: "He is doing it more for you, perhaps, than us, Joel. He declares he owes it to you. I've told him how you have often stinted yourself to pay my bills. I have told him, too, that but for you I'd have remained in the life he so detested. Not one man in a thousand would have treated me as you have done. You can't avoid it, Joel—we are all going to live in that fine house and be comfortable and happy at last."

He bowed silently. That was his answer. He accepted her proposal as a proud man might a shameful verdict of death. He went back to his wagon, raised his tattered hat, and mounted upon his load of wood.

CHAPTER XV

"I don't think he wants to," Cavanaugh said. "He kept in the shadow while I was talking to him and had his hat pulled down over his eyes."

As John went outside he saw Eperson at the fence. A thing that touched him sharply was the fact that Eperson unlatched the gate and swung it open, as a servant might have done for his master, while he still kept his eyes hidden under the broad brim of his slouch-hat.

"I came to see you— I had to see you, Mr. Trott," Eperson muttered, jerkingly. "I heard you were going away to-night and I couldn't—well, I had to see you."

"I understand, Eperson," John said, wondering over his own stilted tone to a man whom he so profoundly pitied. "Will you come in—or shall we—?"

"Yes, we can walk, if you don't mind," Eperson answered, quickly. "I really think it would be better. Curious people pass along and look in windows sometimes, but back here in the wood there is no light and it is quiet."

"Yes, that is better," John agreed. And side by side the two men walked along Cavanaugh's lot fence till they were in the thicket of stunted trees behind the property. Presently Eperson paused, raised his head, and spoke again:

"This will do, Mr. Trott. I really don't know what to say in beginning, for it seems to me that a million things come up, but your mother told me about the property you gave her—the farm and all the rest."

"Yes, yes, I know— I hoped that she would mention it to you," John said, out of a sympathy he didn't dream he possessed. "That was really part of the—the understanding. She needs a comfortable home and she could not look after it herself. She knows, and I know, that you can manage it well, and so—"

"But—but don't you see—can't you understand?" Eperson pushed his hat back and his great, all but bloodshot eyes gleamed piteously in the starlight. "Don't you see that I can't be put on a rack like that and live under it? Do you think I have no pride or manhood left? I am a failure—worse than a beggar. I aspired for that of which I was unworthy—your wife—and I've come to tell you something to-night which no proud man ever in the history of the world told another. I've come to tell you that—"

"Stop, Joel, you mustn't," John broke in, and he gently laid his hand on the shoulder of the other. "That is a thing neither of us must ever hold in mind for a moment. Listen to me. You and I are in the swirl of great laws we can't understand. Of one thing we can be certain, and that is that we love the same woman. Don't come to me to-night with the idea that you are about to get in my debt. I'm in yours. I was a coward. I deserted my post of duty under the first great blight that fell upon me. I was only a poor, bewildered, stung boy, but I fled while you remained, advised, protected, and cared for both my wife and my mother. By so doing, and through your children, you tied the hearts of those two beings to you forever. My mother is a transformed woman through you—my former wife through you is a glorified mother. Don't think I am fooling myself with romantic ideals. I know where I stand. If I were to dare to-day to lay claim to your place, Tilly would turn upon me in disgust and hatred. And why? Because the price to be paid would be the happiness of the father of her children. That is a holy thing in her eyes, and I, myself, profoundly respect it."

"My God! My God!" moaned Eperson, "you can say this—you can be all this to a man like me?" Eperson's great eyes were filling; his rough breast was heaving; the shoulder under John's gentle hand was quivering.

"Yes, because I admire you from the depths of my soul," was the reply. "Your wife is not for me. My mother is not for me. Your children are theirs and yours. My mother is making a gift to you— I am not doing it. I shouldn't say gift. She is trying to pay a debt that she owes you."

A sob broke from Joel. He caught John's hand and stared into his eyes. "I now know why Tilly still loves you," he gulped. "She loves you because you are more of God than man. I don't know what to say to you further, but I will say this—and as the Almighty is my witness I mean it. I'll do my duty as the father of my children, as the husband before the law of my wife, and as the manager of your mother's property, but I'll never try to win my wife's heart from you."

John's arm slid around the neck of the bowed and broken man. He started to speak, but his voice clogged with a pain that was delicious. It was as if both he and his companion somehow had stood aside from their bodies and were floating among the trees in the dim starlight.

Presently, and without a word, Joel turned and walked away. He plunged again into the wood as if to avoid contact with any one from the streets of the town. On he went, his face turned homeward. There was a hill to ascend, a vale to cross. He reached the top of the hill. His step had become sluggish. He groaned aloud. He folded his arms and stood staring into the moonlight.

"It is incomplete—unfinished, not rounded out," he muttered. "It cannot remain as it is. I haven't the strength to put it through. I know where I'd fail. I'd continue to suffer, and so would he. He is noble to the core of his being. He is doing his best to help me and her, but he is giving more than he is getting, and that isn't fair. After all, after all, there is one thing that I can do for him that he could not do for me!"

THE END

BOOKS BY

ZANE GREY

BOOKS BY

BASIL KING

NOVELS OF

WILL N. HARBEN

William Dean Howells.

Post 8vo, Cloth

BOOKS BY

MARGARET DELAND