robes and the diadem with which she had adorned him—­well, he would put it off until after marriage, he had always told himself, and perhaps by that time he would feel a little less like a sinner profaning a sanctuary when he kissed her.  He had from time to time found in himself a sinful longing that she were just a little less of an angel, just a little more of a fellow sinner—­not too much, of course, for a man wants a pure wife, a pure mother for his children.  But, while the attitudes of worship and of saintliness were cramped, often severely so, still on the whole Arthur had thought he was content with Janet just as she was.

“Why don’t you go to Chicago and see her?” suggested Adelaide.  “You ought to talk with her before anyone else has a chance.  I wouldn’t put anything past her mother.”

“That’s a good idea!” exclaimed Arthur, his face clearing before the prospect of action.  “I’ll take the night train.  Yes, I must be the one to tell her.”

Adelaide had a sense of relief.  Arthur would see Janet; Janet would pour balm upon his wounds, would lift him up to a higher, more generous view.  Then, whatever he might do would be done in the right spirit, with respect for the memory of their father, with consideration for their mother.

“You had better not see mother again until you come back,” she suggested.

His face shadowed and shame came into it that was from the real Arthur Ranger, the son of Hiram and Ellen.  “I wish I hadn’t burst out as I did, Del,” he said.  “I forgot everything in my own wrongs.  I want to try to make it all right with mother.  I can’t believe that I said what I remember I did say before her who’d be glad to die for us.”

“Everything’ll be all right when you come back, Artie,” she assured him.

As they passed the outbuilding where the garden tools were kept they both glanced in.  There stood the tools their father had always used in pottering about the garden, above them his old slouch and old straw hats.  Arthur’s lip quivered; Adelaide caught her breath in a sob.  “O Artie,” she cried brokenly, “He’s gone—­gone—­gone for ever.”  And Artie sat on the little bench just within the door and drew Del down beside him, and, each tightly in the other’s arms, they cried like the children that they were, like the children that we all are in face of the great tragedy.

A handsome and touching figure was Arthur Ranger as he left his cab and slowly ascended the lawn and the steps of the Whitney palace in the Lake Drive at eleven the next morning.  His mourning garments were most becoming to him, contrasting with the fairness of his hair, the blue of his eyes, and the pallor of his skin.  He looked big and strong and sad, and scrupulously fashionable, and very young.