"Your silence tied me to one. Men are perverse devils. I hated the sight of this wedding ring; I longed to melt it in a crucible in my laboratory. You will never understand the storm that raged within me that day on the train when you hummed Kuecken and laid the baby on your breast. Every time you lifted your hand and patted the poor little creature, that gold band danced and flashed in my eyes like a mocking imp. But your ring had its innings. After a year my temper cooled. Day and night I found myself drifting back more hopelessly to you; and always before me your little white hand flashed that circle--signet of my ownership--because you had clung to it and declared 'it was the badge of your loyalty.' I saw it in the blue gulfs of icebergs, in the wonderful orange radiance of auroral arches, in the glare of low, tired suns that could not set, in the unearthly lustre of moons holding vigil over a silent desert wrapped in its shroud of ice, and in the ghostly phosphorescence of snow-mantled glaciers. Always, everywhere, that dear ringed hand beckoned like a beacon. I knew you did not love me; I was grimly sure you never would; but the assurance that no other man could ever claim lips denied to me, that you would proudly hold and keep your precious self sacred to one whose name you bore, comforted me." He took her face in his palms, bending close his handsome head, and a mist dimmed the sparkle in his magnetic eyes. "My darling, the coldest night I ever spent, when lost on the 'Great Ice,' where a snow-storm obliterated sledge tracks and death seemed inevitable, the remembered touch of your dear arms clinging around my neck, the pressure of your face on my breast, thrilled my heart, fired my blood, and warmed my freezing body. I missed the Pole; I nearly lost my life; but, ah, thank God, better than either, more precious than all, I have found at last, and I own the pure heart of my wife." POPULAR NOVELS BY AUGUSTA EVANS WILSON. INEZ BEULAH MACARIA ST. ELMO VASHTI INFELICE AT THE MERCY OF TIBERIUS A SPECKLED BIRD "Who has not read with rare delight the novels of Augusta Evans? Her strange, wonderful and fascinating style; the profound depths to which she sinks the probe into human nature, touching its most sacred chords and springs; the intense interest thrown around her characters, and the very marked peculiarities of her principal figures, conspire to give an unusual interest to the works of this eminent Southern authoress." ECCENTRICITIES OF GENIUS By Major J. B. Pond. READ WHAT IS SAID OF IT. "It is distinctly one of the most interesting books of the year from any point of view."--_Rochester Sunday Herald._ "It is many a day since I have read so fascinating a book of reminiscences. Many a day--or perhaps I should have said a 'night'--for this volume has given me delight during hours, when, according to the laws of nature, I should have been asleep."--_Newell Dwight Hillis._