Cherokee bit her lips to conceal a quiver; turning almost appealingly to Marrion, she urged: “Won’t you please go, too?” He did not answer. “Please go, and look after him.” He was calm almost to coldness, and he replied, tentatively: “Robert would have asked me if he had wanted me along.” “Oh, dear friend,” she murmured, brokenly, as she sank into a chair, “how much better it would have been if I had never known loving or wedding.” Marrion looked through the windows into the bleared, vague, misty world, the familiar landscape was unrecognizable in the clinging fog. He understood, as she did, what had taken Robert from his work. He did not look at her, as he returned: “I hope he’ll quit this, sometime.” “Sometime,” she repeated, “pain and struggle will give place to death, and then the soft shroud of forgetting will help me bear this grief.” “But I am looking forward to the change to bless this life,” he tried to impress upon her. “He will get through this great work which he considers the effort of a life, and pretty soon he will leave off the old way, and then his past will be atoned for by a future of tenderness and devotion to you.” “But, dearest friend,” she broke in, greatly agitated, “help me to live in the present, I am weary of waiting. I hunger for repose. Memories crush me while longing has worn my youth away. I know my one longing is hopeless--hopeless as though I should stretch these hungry arms to clasp the sun above us. I have given up hope at last!” Meeting his troubled look her face showed traces of tears. She handed him a paper and pointed to a bit of verse. He read to himself: “I know a land where the streets are paved With the things which we meant to achieve; It is walled with the money we meant to have saved, And the pleasures for which we grieve-- And kind words unspoken, the promises broken, And many a coveted boon, Are stowed away there in that land of somewhere, The land of “Pretty Soon.” There are uncut jewels of possible fame Lying about in the dust, And many a noble and lofty aim Covered with mould and dust And oh, this place, while it seems so near, Is further away than the moon; Though our purpose is fair, yet we never get there-- To the land of “Pretty Soon.” The roads that lead to that mystic land Are strewn with pitiful wrecks; And the ships that have sailed for its shining strand Bear skeletons on their decks. It is further at noon than it was at dawn, And further at night than at noon; Oh let us beware of that land down there-- The land of “Pretty Soon.”” Marrion laid the paper by, and summoning all his powers of self-control: “I spoke of his reformation just now,” he began, as if reading her thoughts. “Answer me one question; if he never reforms, have you ever thought of changing your life?”