“You may say what you please, Madge, I see it more clearly every day, and reproach myself that I did not understand you.  I was content to amuse and pet you, and you naturally did not think me capable of doing anything more.  You went away alone to make as brave a fight as was ever battled out in this world, and I had no part in helping you.  Mr. and Mrs. Wayland were worth a wilderness of superficial society-fellows like me.  I now know why you did not care to correspond with me while making your noble effort.”

[Illustration:  HER LIPS WERE SLIGHTLY PARTED; HER POSE, GRACE ITSELF.]

“Truly, Graydon, your memory and penetration are phenomenal.”

“You may disclaim out of kindness now, but I know I am right.  You make my life appear shallow and trivial.  What have I done in the last two years but attend carefully, from habit, to the details of business, and then amuse myself?  And when I wrote I merely sought to amuse you.  What were my flippant letters worth to one who was in earnest?”

“Graydon,” said Madge, looking into his eyes with gentle dignity, “you may do yourself injustice if you will, but you shall not misjudge me.  I have acquired a little of the art of taking care of myself, and you are doing me a wrong which I cannot permit.  I remember everything, from the time that your kind eyes rested on the pallid, shrinking child that crept down to the dining-room when we first met, and from that day to this you have been kind and helpful to me.  I said that I regarded you as one of the best friends I had in the world.  Do you think me insincere?  Do you think I forget how kind you were when society would not have tolerated the ghost I was?  I am not one who forgets and ignores the past—­who can go on to new friends with a frigid shoulder for old ones.  Let us end these misunderstandings.  Before the year is out you will probably be engaged, perhaps married.  Our lives will be widely separated.  That is inevitable from the nature of things.  But distance and absence can cause no such separation as results from misunderstanding.  If we should not meet again in twenty years I should be the same loyal friend.  Now I’ve said it, and don’t vex me again by speaking as if I had not said and meant it.”

“I can scarcely tell whether your words make me more glad or sad.  Each feeling is deeper than you will ever believe.  You certainly give me the impression that if I marry Stella Wildmere our lives will be separated.”

“You don’t take nature, especially woman-nature, into consideration at all.  I am not congenial to Miss Wildmere; she does not like me.  It is nothing against her, but some people are antagonistic.  This is especially true among women, and in this case it is not strange.  Our experiences have been very different.  She has ever been a beautiful, brilliant society-girl.  With her at your side you would always be an object of envy in circles congenial to you, for admiration would follow her as the light