It had required all her strength and weight to tear Loretta from her victim. Having succeeded in separating them, Constance hastily put herself on the defensive, expecting a fresh attack; but Loretta, panting from her exertions, stood facing them for a moment, then burst into a strident, gleeful laugh.

"You've saved her," she cried. "I'm crazy-stark crazy, I guess. What was it I said? I was going to take her where she'd have to scrub dirty marble floors forever and ever. I'd like to save her soul, she tried so hard to save mine. But it was time thrown away from the start. I was born bad-a moral pervert, as the doctor calls it. Christianity was wasted on me." She shook her head, and looked from one to the other. They, horrified but spellhound, waited, uncertain what course to pursue. Mrs. Wilson, now that she had partially recovered her poise, felt the impulse to elucidate this horrifying mystery. But though she wished to speak, the proper language did not suggest itself. How could one discuss causes with a mad woman? She raised her hands to put in place the tiara which had been crushed down on her brow.

"Look at her," cried Loretta, commandingly, addressing Constance and pointing. "Isn't she beautiful? She's civilization." She made a low obeisance. "I was in love with her once; I love her still. You saved her."

She frowned and passed her hand across her forehead as though to clear her brain. Then she laughed again; she had recovered her clew.

"You were the sort she could help, Constance Stuart; you were good. But how has she her church-paid you back? Cheated you with a gold brick. Ha! Made you believe that it was your Christian duty to let Gordon Perry, Esq., Counsellor at Law, go. That's the way the aristocrats still try to fool the common people. But isn't she beautiful? My compliments to both of you."

She swept a low courtesy in exaggeration of those she had witnessed a few hours earlier. "It is pitiful-pitiful and perplexing," murmured Mrs. Wilson in ago nized dismay.

For a moment Loretta stood irresolute, then of a sudden she began to shiver like

one seized with an ague. She regarded them distractedly with staring eyes, and throwing up her hands, fell forward on her face in convulsive delirium. Constance rushed to her side; the two women raised her and laid her on the bed. Mrs. Wilson's maid was aroused, and a physician communicated with by telephone. He came within an hour and prescribed the necessary treatment. He said that the patient's system was saturated with cocaine, but intimated that she would probably recover from this attack.

After the doctor had gone and Loretta had been removed to her own room, Mrs. Wilson and Constance watched by the side of the sufferer, whose low moaning was the sole disturber of the stillness of the breaking dawn. Each was lost in her own secret thoughts. The cruel finger-marks on Mrs. Wilson's neck burned painfully, but the words of her mad critic had seared her soul. For the moment social truth seemed sadly remote. She reflected mournfully but humbly that ever and anon proud man and his systems are held up to derision by the silent forces of nature. When the darkness had faded so that they could discern each other's faces, she arose, and sitting down beside Constance on the sofa drew her toward her and kissed her. Was it in acknowledgment that she had saved her life, or as a symbol of a broader faith? "Kiss me too, Constance," she whispered.

The embrace was fondly returned, and at this loosening of the tension of their strained spirits they wept gently in each other's arms. Then Mrs. Wilson added, "Come, let us go where we can talk. We could do nothing at present which my maid cannot do."

She led the way to her boudoir. The idea of seeking sleep had never occurred to either of them. Although Mrs. Wilson had felt the need of speech, it was some minutes after they had established themselves before she broke the silence. When she did so she spoke suddenly and with emotion, like one beset by a repugnant conviction yet loath to acknowledge it.

"Can I have deserved this, Constance?" The vivid protest in her companion's face made clear that Constance did not penetrate her subtler meaning, and she hastened to answer her own question.

"Not to be strangled by a violent lunatic," she said, raising a hand involuntarily to her neck. "But her words were a judgment a lacerating judgment. How I should loathe it to scrub dirty marble floors forever and ever. It is just thatthe dirt, the disorder, the common reek, which I shrink from and shun in spite of myself. How did she ever find out? I love too much the lusciousness of life.

'It is the little rift within the lute

That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silence all.'

Do you not see, Constance?"

Leaning forward with clasped hands and speaking with melodious pathos while the morning light rested on her tired but interesting face, her confession had the effect of a monologue save for its final question. And Constance, listening, understood. In truth this cry of the soul at bay came as a quickener to her own surging emotions, and she realized that the walls of the temple of beauty had fallen like those of Jericho at the trumpets of Israel. Yet though she understood and saw starkly revealed the limit of the gospel of the splendor of things, with all the purging of perplexities which that meant for her, the claims of gratitude and of unabated admiration no less than pity caused her to shrink from immediate acquiescence in her patron's self-censure. And as she hesitated for the proper antidote, Mrs. Wilson pursued her confession relentlessly pursued it, however, as one who recites the weakness of a cause to which she is hopelessly committed.

"One is spurred to refine and refine and refine. Does not even religion-my religion—so teach us? the spirit ostensibly, and, in order to reach the spirit, the body; and in this age of things and of great possessions one reaches greedily after the quintessence of comfort until-until one needs some shock like this to perceive that one might become perhaps is, an intellectual sybarite. Nay, more; though we crave almost by instinct individual lustre and personal safety, reaching out for luxury that we may grow superfine, must not we— we American women with ideals-mistrust the social beauty of a universe which still produces the masses and all the horrors of life? Can it fundamentally avail that a few should be exquisite and have radiant

thoughts, if the rest are condemned to a coarse, unlovely heritage?"

Not only did gratitude reassert itself as Constance listened to this speculative plaint, but protesting common sense as well, which recognized the morbidness of the thought without ignoring its cogency.

"Ah, you exaggerate; you are unjust to yourself," she exclaimed fervidly. "You must not overlook what your influence and example have been to me and many others. I owe you so much! more than I can ever repay. It was you who opened the garden of life to me."

Mrs. Wilson started at the tense, spontaneous apostrophe, and the color mounted to her cheeks. Never had so grateful a tribute been laid at her feet as this in the hour of tribulation. And as she gazed she felt that she had a right to be proud of the noble-looking, the sophisticated woman who held out to her these refreshing laurels.

"And it is not that I do not comprehend that I do not share your qualms," Constance continued, ignoring the gracious look that she might express herself completely in this crucial hour. The time had come to utter her own secret, which she felt to be the most eloquent of revolts against the mystic superfineness she had just heard deprecated. "Within the last twelve hours the scales have fallen from my eyes also, and what seemed to me truth is no longer truth. There is something I wish to tell you, Mrs. Wilson. Yesterday afternoon I heard that the legacy tax bill had been defeated; last night before I went to bed I posted a letter to Gordon Perry informing him that I would be his wife. I have asked him to come to see me at Lincoln Chambers this morning."

Mrs. Wilson's lip trembled. Genuine as was her probing of self, this flank attack from one who just now had brought balm to her wounds and cheer to her soul was a fresh and vivid shock. To feel that this other ward, whom she had deemed so safe, was about to slip from her fingers was more than she could bear. Then instinctively Constance went to her and put her arm around her. "I am sorry to hurt you," she said tenderly, "but this is a time to speak plainly. I love him, and I feel that I have been trifling with love. I am

sure at last of this: that it is better for the world that two people like him and me should be happy than live apart out of deference to a bond which is a mere husk. I prefer to be natural and free rather than exquisite and artificial. As Gordon said, the ban of the Church when the law gives one freedom is nothing but a fetich. I cannot follow the Church in this. To do so would be to starve my soul for the sake of a false ideal a false beauty cultivated for the few alone, as you have intimated, at the expense of the great heart of humanity. I can no longer be a party to such an injustice; I must not sacrifice to it the man I love."

There was a brief silence. Mrs. Wilson, as her question presently showed, was trying to piece together cause and effect.

"You wrote to him last night, Constance? Then this-horror had nothing to do with your decision?"

"Nothing; I had been on the verge of it for some time: I can see that now. And when the news of his defeat came, I felt that I must go to him if he would let me." "He will let you, Constance."

"I think so," she answered with a happy thrill.

Mrs. Wilson looked up at her, and observing the serenity of her countenance, knew that the issue was settled beyond peradventure. Yet she was in the mood to be generous as well as humble; moreover, her inquiring mind had not failed to notice the plea for humanity and to feel its force. THE

She sighed gently, then patted the hand that held hers, and said:

"Perhaps, dear, you are right. At all events, go now and get some sleep. You must look your own sweet self when he comes to you."

A few hours later Constance, refreshed by slumber, was on her way to Lincoln Chambers. She walked as though on wings, for she knew in her heart that her lover would not fail her. Arriving a little before the appointed time, she dismissed the children to school, and, smiling at fate, waited for what was to be. At the stroke of the trysting hour she heard his knock. She bade him enter, and as their eyes met he folded her in his arms. "Gordon!" "Constance!"

"I have surrendered." She looked up into his face, bewitching in her happiness. "Thank God for that!"

"But I come to you conscience free, Gordon," she said, drawing back her radiant face so that he must hear her avowal before his title was complete. "I would not have you think that I have compromised or juggled with myself. If I believed that I should be a whit less pure and spiritual a woman by becoming your wife, I would never have sent for you, dearly as I love you."

"And I would not have had you, darling. The love which is conscious of a stain is a menace to the world."

END.