pleasant story." The only clue was the ring. I found it on his finger. How he came to have it I can't say: I only know that the last time I had seen it, it had been on the other man's hand. I kept the ring, and told no one. The miserable creature had ended miserably; that assegai had sent him and his story together into death. I kept the ring, hoping that some day I might meet its real owner, but from that hour to this it has remained with me. I can only suppose that the real owner died or was murdered-who can say?" He shifted uneasily forthcoming. on the seat, and then began. "Some six years ago I was in command of the police on our South African frontier." ("South Africa!" she murmured). "One afternoon I had ridden over to the inn in the town-we call them towns, you know-which was my headquarters, and there I came across two strangers. New-comers are always interesting, especially to a police officer, and I can remember them distinctly-I have good reason to. One was a man of about thirty, a loafer if ever there was one, with that sort of face one would not trust round a corner-—” "And the other?" she broke in, pered, "thank you." eagerly. The other was rather younger-a gentleman, but-" he paused nervously. "You promised to tell the truth," she said, reproachfully. "Well, he looked as if-as if-pardon the expression-he had not been altogether wise in his life. I liked his face, but it was a weak face, and I pitied him for being found in such company as that other rascal was. I noticed particularly two things. He had slight mole high up on his left cheek-" a She buried her face in her hands. "My husband," she said, with a sob. "And he was wearing that ring. They rode away together shortly afterwards, and I never saw him again. How, then, did I get the ring? Strangely enough. Some six months later I had news that a farm in my district had been raided, and it was my duty to collar the raiders. These things, you know, don't get into the English papers, and it is well they don't. They would cause complications. When I reached the farm there was not a soul in it, man, woman, or beast. But in the sitting-room found"-his voice deepened as memory surged over him-"that loafer, face downwards, in a pool of his own blood. An assegai had gone through his back and had ended his miserable life. No one knew anything about him, and so we buried him in the farmsteading. I made discreet inquiries, but no evidence as to his identity was I the Mrs. Heathcote still sat with her face in her hands. "Thank you," she whis West was awed. A terrible consciousness of human helplessness in the iron grip of fate had numbed his mind. Presently he was able to add, "I ought perhaps to tell you that I did find something else. In one of the cupboards there was a coat, and in one of its pockets I came across this scrap." He fumbled for his pocket-book and produced the tiny relic of yellow notepaper. "Perhaps I was wrong," he went on, "but of that discovery also I told no one. It confirmed my worst suspicions, for the coat no more than the ring belonged to the dead man. But what was the use of publishing it? And So I kept it with the ring, and can now restore it to the writer." She had looked up bewildered when he had begun to speak, and she took the soiled morsel mechanically from him. As her eye lighted on it her parched lips moved in pathetic silence. "It was the last letter that I wrote to him," was her brief comment, uttered in the hard voice which sounds cruelly in a woman. Her eyes told more than her words; they were eloquent of long years of cankering pain and unceasing remorse. most West rose. Delicacy bade him leave her alone with her memories. "I shall make a fool of myself if I stay here," was his uppermost thought. He was slipping away, when she held out a hand. "Thank you," she said, simply. "Some day you will be glad you kept that- that terrible story to yourself. Do not resounded with the unholy sob of ask me to explain at present-and shells and the pitiless crack of Mardo not tell my brother yet; he is not tinis. so strong as I am, though I am a woman." A mad desire to stay and offer her some comfort swept over West. He half turned back. She was sitting with her face still in her hands, and the morning sun played saucily on her hair and neck; but when he saw her fling herself on the seat in a blinding passion of tears, for the first time in his life he fled from a position in which it would have been braver to have stayed. “Well, I am jiggered!" was all he could say, when safe in his own room. "1 have known some queer things in my day, but this beats all." He shook his fist at his face in the glass. "Own up, you fool, you are a damned ass! I don't know which was worst, in the wood or on that seat-'pon my word, I might be a beastly young sub! I'm hanged if I wouldn't rather face Maxims or those cursed Boers than― What is there in the woman?" he wound up, beginning to pace up and down. "It is high time, Everard West, you were going." Needless to say, having made up his mind to go, he did precisely the opposite. A week later saw him still at St. Germain, getting more and more enmeshed each day. The spring was kind. There followed a series of flaw less days; and what happy days they were in that inexhaustible Forest! days in which they explored haunt after haunt of undreamed-of beautydays of al-fresco picnics, of childish gossip over old, unhappy, faroff things-the forgotten glories of Francis I., Henry II., and Diane de Poitiers, of "Notre Henri Quatre," of Anne of Austria and the pompous youth of the "Grand Monarque," of exiled Stuarts learning too late what charity meant; or maybe they lived breathlessly through fights with Afghans and Zulus, through perils in snow-bound mountain-passes, in waterless deserts, or the monotonous veldt, until these peaceful glades were alive with the ghosts of desperate men, and was not departure They had arranged to journey on together to Versailles, but it until the evening of their that Mrs. Heathcote broke silence on the topic which had brought them together. West and she had strolled out after dinner on to the moonlit Terrace to bid it farewell. But after a few commonplace remarks on the magic panorama slumbering before her, Mrs. Heathcote sat down on the seat, and by a quiet movement of her skirt invited her companion to do likewise. "I may not get another chance," she began, calmly; "but I owe you-shall I call it a confession? I have been making up my mind as to how much I should tell you, and have now decided to tell you all." She stopped as if to gain strength, and West struck in hurriedly: "I don't think you owe me any explanation. Had we not better forget the ring and its story?" "So I have thought," she replied; "but no; on the whole, you had better hear. I owe it to myself if not to you." West nodded. "You are the best judge," he remarked, almost to his cigar. "Let me begin from the beginning, then," she said. “I was born and brought up in a country rectory in an old-fashioned way. My knowledge of life was absolutely nil: at best it came from sheepish flirtations with a callow curate-every girl, you will say, I suppose, can flirt by the light of nature; at its worst, from the gossip of a few girls as wise as myself. I married my husband when I was a child of eighteen, who knew as much about marriage as any uneducated child of eighteen can." She stopped to draw her cloak about her with an expressive shiver. The next sentences came with a pathetic rush. "My husband was a mere boy, with much more money than was good for him or tor me. Unlike myself, he had been educated on modern methods. We plunged into the whirl of society, and for a time I was as happy as any girl could be who discovers what wealth and social status can give her. Then came disillusionment. It must come, I suppose, to us all; it came to me when I was but a young wife. No doubt, if I had been brought up differently, I might have accepted my awakening with equanimity. Any way, I didn't. My husband was rich, and he was weak. Worst of all, he was as clay in the hands of every woman who chose to exercise her power; and women, God knows!-some women-can be merci less as well as vicious. We drifted apart; it was my fault-I didn't think so then, but I think so now-for I was too angry to put out a hand to save him. He knew he was-was not what he ought to have been. He loved me after his fashion-that I also believe now, but I didn't believe it then-andand then he took to drinking. It is the old, old story; there were quarrels, and the breach grew wider. Our differences came to a head. We were both young and hot-tempered, and I had been trained to look on the life he was leading as worse than death. We parted I returned to my father, and he, after a few solitary months in London, went to the Cape." Her eyes had filled with tears, and she had crumpled up one glove into a tight ball-these were the only signs of what the recital was costing her. "Before he left," she continued, "he came down to the Rectory-and I let him go. I was mad, drunk with indignation if you will, and I spurned him from my presence. He went; and the rest you know." Her voice had choked. "That ring," she added, drawing it softly from her finger, "had been a present from myself. I had given it him in those happy days of my courtship and girlhood, when love had first come into my life." The wistful cadences of her voice seemed to haunt the air with the balm of moonlight summer nights and lovers' vows. "That scrap of a letter which you found-ah! I am glad he got it, for in it I had asked him to come back, and let the past be forgotten." She broke off, and turned to him with eyes that awaited his verdict. Moved by a sudden impulse, he held out his hand. "I am both sorry and glad you have told me," he said, with deep emotion; "sorry to have given you the pain of telling a stranger what he had no right to hear; but glad because" his voice wavered in spite of himself -"if I honored you before, I honor you still more to-night." She glanced back at him, the flicker of a happy smile in her pain-stricken eyes, and took his hand. It was as if they had clasped hands over a grave. "It seems so long ago," she went on, presently, "that I can now talk about it calmly. I often wonder whether I am the same woman who went through that terrible ordeal. The past seven years have taught me much-they have taught me to forgive that poor boy all his foolish dissipation; and, thanks to you, I know that he had forgiven me. I was no fit wife for him-believe me, I was not. I ought never to have married him; but, like so many young girls, I mistook mere physical admiration for love. I now see that I never really loved him. If I had, I should have been more forbearing, for the quintessence of a woman's love is the divine gift of charity. Yes, yes," she added, almost impatiently, "it is; and the cruelty of my act lies here. My marriage ruined his life, while it saved mine. It taught me that love is not something which comes to a woman unasked for-that is the view of most girls and some women; but it is hopelessly wrong. Love, like everything else worth having in life, is something you must win. You remember the saying of Milton about the beautiful life and the beautiful poem. Well-love, real love, can only be won by a woman, can only be in spired by a woman, when she makes Ah! but I mustn't her life beautiful. perplex you with my metaphysics—a woman's metaphysics," she added, with a smile. "You have your own creed, have you not? Supposing you go and fetch my brother, and forget all I have been saying." She rose, still smiling, and the inter- women, clever women, honorable view was at an end. beautiful But if Everard West was reluctant to leave her before, he was doubly reluctant after that evening. And yet, abuse himself as he might, he could not point to any conclusive reason for staying. Mrs. Heathcote was not that is to say, she had eyes whose mystery was inexhaustible, and a voice whose timbre had an uncanny way of vibrating long after words had been uttered, but most distinctly she was not beautiful-from the military point of view. West knew a dozen women who in beauty were vastly her superior, to talk to whom, however, he would not have walked across the Terrace. No; it was not her beauty which kept him at her side. But had Captain West been a psychologist, he would have recognized that in reality it was under the spell of character and personality he had fallen. He was only beginning dimly to feel that in a woman, as in a man, mind can be a far more potent wizard than mere beauty of face ог body. Her care for her delicate brother; her touching ways with the infants on the Terrace; her child-like purity of thought, shining in every word and look; her virginal daintiness of soul, of which the twist of a ribbon in her hair, the posy of flowers in her belt, the subtle harmonies in her dress, seemed to be the outward and fragrant symbols, these were what stole with hourly triumph over him. She seemed to move, to think, to have her being in an atmosphere which awed his senses and left him bewildered. Experience of life cannot be too dearly boughtthat had been his own creed-and he had seen the world in its most naked and dirtiest aspects. But here was a woman who, like himself, had come into contact with human beings in their vilest phases, who had been forced to drink of sorrow and degradation, and who had come through the ordeal unscathed. Not one speck of mire had soiled even the hem of her robe; she had seen the mud, had walked through the mud, and it had been powerless to hurt her. West had known beautiful women; he had been intimate with women who were neither beautiful, clever, nor honorable; he had been "in love," as most men, a dozen times; but not until this week had he even dreamed of what reverence for womanhood could mean. It was as if a new sense had suddenly swum into his ken, and had trampled contemptuously on the philosophy which had taken fifteen bitter years to build. And then there would surge over him, as he tossed on his sleepless bed, the hot consciousness that this new light had dawned on himself, who had been-ah! what had he not been? "May I tell you how glad I am we met you?" she surprised him by remarking one afternoon at Versailles as they had fled from perfunctory tramping through its fatiguing spleudors to a seat in the gardens. "My brother has become a different man. I cannot be too grateful 1or the medicine of your society." Her words touched him to the quick. "I never know when you are chaffing me," he replied, tilting his straw hat nervously over his eyes. "Might I not say something about chaffing?" she interrupted. "I thought cynics never altered. Cynicism is like the laws of the Medes and Persians, is it not?" "But why persist in calling me a cynic? Is it quite fair?" She looked at him in puzzled simplicity. "Perhaps you are right," she said, thoughtfully. "Cynics, after all, are not enigmas, and you are a terrible enigma. Oh yes, you are," smiling down his protest, "and you delight in the fact. What foolishness it is to say women are riddles! it is men who are the riddles. Man, I am sure, is the last riddle that will be solved by woman." "But how does this apply?" "Well-pardon my frankness-but I often wonder what you are going to do with yourself?" The interest in her eyes and voice was unmistakable. "Do with myself?" he repeated, as if he disliked the idea. "Oh, I suppose do as I did before." "What! go back to spill more blood in South Africa? If I were you, that is just what I should not do." "May I hear what you would do?" "Oh, certainly!" She fiddled with her parasol. "I should retire and-" "Retire!" he laughed. "Retire and become a fat squire with an uncomfortable past-become a decorous citizen, subscribe to the Primrose League and growl at Democracy-live a life as viciously respectable as was lived in that deplorable monument of impeccable taste." He waved his hand at the façade of the palace, which surveyed them with its chilly glare of self-conscious breeding. "Mrs. Heathcote, if you had lived my life you would know that that was impossible. I should be as much out of place in English country life as the Siamese ambassadors were at the Court of Louis XIV." "Impossible!" she echoed, warmly. "You of all persons to use that phrase, you who have" He winced, as he always did, at such allusions. I had loved-vilely betrayed. So I went to South Africa and the devil together I beg your pardon, I was forgetting. Any way, I had my chance of being domesticated, and I made a mess of it; and since then the women I have met have done nothing to make me alter my verdict on the sex." He paused, expecting her usual reproaches, but instead she was looking at him with the tenderest sympathy. "I am sorry," she said in a whisper, "very sorry. We women have much to answer for. I had no idea that that was your story. Forgive me for having spoken so lightly." A smile broke into her eyes. "The riddle is solved," she said, quickly. "And, like every bad riddle," he replied, "there is no proper answer." "Oh no!" she rejoined, warmly, "the answer is yet to come. You simply made the same mistake that I did. You mistook physical admiration for love. Love can only be won." "By the beautiful life," he interrupted, bitterly. "And my life has been so beautiful." "Not altogether, I fear," she replied, half sadly. "But you have at least been unselfish-we all know that. Come, be honest, and admit that on that chord of unselfishness you can, .f you will, build up the beautiful symphony." "Ah! if I could only believe you. But I have no sister, as you have your brother, to train myself on. I have no one-no one." She flushed. "No, not at present, but you can find a woman who wouldShe broke off. Was it, West asked himself with a delicious throb, because she could not trust herself?" "I retract," he said, slowly. "It might have been possible once; it is no longer so." She was gazing at him questioningly. "I don't think," he replied gently, "you quite understand what I have been. Perhaps I am a riddle, but it's not of my making. There was a time when your ideal was my ideal; but, after fifteen years of cutting throats, it only remains for me to continue cutting the throats that civilization in its own interest says must be cat. You tell me my view of life is all wrong-perhaps it is. I have never told you my story -I couldn't tell you all-but I will confide to you one episode. Have you "Alas, no! I know that. But, beguessed that I first went to South lieve me, there are women-" in her Africa because of a woman? That was eagerness she put a hand on his arm. fifteen years ago. I was a young sub, He shrank back from her touch. The and knew everything. I was engaged movement was cruelly pathetic. "No, to be married-in order to be jilted, I Mrs. Heathcote," he said, almost suppose. I was betrayed by a woman fiercely; "your optimism does you "And then suppose I made another mistake? All women are not as you are always saying they ought to be," he added, seeing her troubled look. |