and I was far too ambitious to submit to this degradation when it could be avoided.  You know of the gradual change in our feelings for each other, know what followed her coming home, and you can perhaps understand how I grew so morbidly sensitive to anything concerning her, and so desirous to conceal my marriage from every one.  This, of course, prompted me to keep her existence a secret as long as possible, and, in my efforts to do so, I can see now that I oftentimes acted the part of a fool.  If I could live over the past again I would proclaim from the housetops that Nina was my wife.  I love her with a different love since I told you all.  She is growing fast into my heart, and I have hopes that a sight of her old home, together with the effects of her native air, will do her good.  Griswold always said it would, and preposterous as it seems, I have even dared to dream of a future, when Nina will be in a great measure restored to reason.”

“If she does, Arthur, what then?” and, in her excitement, Edith raised herself in bed, and sat looking at him with eyes which grew each moment rounder, blacker, brighter, but had in them, alas, no expression of joy; and when in answer to her appeal, Arthur said,

“I shall make her my wife,” she fell back upon her pillow, uttering a moaning cry, which to the startled Arthur sounded like,

“No, no! no, no! not your wife.”

“Edith,” and rising to his feet Arthur stood with folded arms, gazing pityingly upon her, himself now the stronger of the two.  “Edith, you, of all others, must not tempt me to fall.  You surely will counsel me to do right!  Help me! oh, help me!  I am so weak, and I feel my good resolutions all giving way at sight of your distress!  If it will take one iota from your pain to know that Nina shall never be my acknowledged wife, save as she is now, I will swear to you that, were her reason ten times restored, she shall not; But, Edith, don’t, don’t make me swear it.  I am lost, lost if you do.  Help me to do right, won’t you, Edith?”

He knelt beside her again, pleading with her not to tempt him from the path in which he was beginning to walk; and Edith, as she listened, felt the last link, which bound her to him, snapping asunder.  For a moment she had wavered; had shrank from the thought that any other could ever stand to him in the relation she once had hoped to stand; but that weakness was over, and while chiding herself for it, she hastened to make amends.

Turning her face toward him, and laying both her hands on his bowed head, she said,

“May the Good Father bless you, Arthur, even as you prove true to Nina.  I have loved you, more than you will ever know, or I can ever tell, and my poor, bruised heart clings to you still with a mighty grasp.  It is so hard to give you up, but it is right.  I shall think of you often in your beautiful Southern home, praying always that God will bless you and forgive you at the last, even as I forgive you.  And now farewell, my Arthur, I once fondly hoped to call you, but mine no longer—­Nina’s Arthur—­go.”