This was his best old friend, this was the being he admired most upon earth. She was his dearest comrade, his work-fellow and his playmate, his human free and equal. She had a mind as good as his, a spirit whose integrity he respected no less than his own; hands that were capable and feet that she stood upon, and did not depend. She had an honor that was not woman's honor, a virtue and character that had no part with the business of sex. There was no competence a man had that this woman did not have: she was as versatile and thoughtful and fearless and free as the best of them. And, through and beyond all this, there was the discovered marvel, that she had tilled and kept sweet the garden of her womanhood. Underlying her rich human worthiness, as the mothering earth lies under a tree, there was the treasure he had hardly glimpsed, this store of her secret tenderness. So it was that Charles Garrott spoke up suddenly, with a kind of huskiness:-- "No, there's only one thing to talk of now. You will have to hear my story." The grammar-school teacher did not move. The twilit sitting-room was stiller than a church. The young man went toward her on feet not now to be stopped. "But not from the beginning--no. That doesn't matter. It's the ending--I have waited to talk with you about." He stood now by the hard-worked little desk, an elbow rested on the top; he looked down at the bent familiar head, the thick crown of feminine fair hair. Just so, he had stood and looked on that other day, when she had written upon his heart what freedom meant to her. "I wanted to show how one man--got his education in womanhood--learned how strength is stronger for being sweet--just by coming to see and understand the moral beauty of one woman's life.... That is my story. But it isn't enough to end with." Some of his dignity, some of his self-control, seemed abruptly to forsake the hard-pressed young man. "You are that woman," he said, hoarsely. "You've educated me. But it isn't enough." She, his only heroine, raised her head, gave him one look from under her arched brows; a strange look, that might have said good-bye to the perfect friendship he had forever changed now. And he saw in the dusk that her face was very pale. "You've supposed I want nothing for myself. I am here asking for everything...." Her lashes fell. He was so close to her now that, just by putting out his arm a little, he could have taken one of the small hands on the desk-leaf. So he did put out his arm thus. Her hand, possessed, was cold as ice; but it was not withdrawn. No, Mary's hand seemed to stay and cling, like a hand come Home. And now he heard her voice, as tender as a mother's:-- "Ah, have I anything to give, do you think--that hasn't been given? What sort of ending do you want?" So Charles told her then what sort of ending he wanted. And that, and no other, was the sort of ending he had. THE END By Henry Sydnor Harrison