“Once a deserter, always one,” His Highness made remark. “Don’t you see that more important affairs than yours await? Just remember this, no wife is worth deserting a good fight for.” Corporal Sam, with head sagging and shoulders disturbed by more than his crutch, stepped aside. But a wonderful light shone from his blue eyes into the Satanic gray ones. “I know,” he muttered, “that what made my Mary Gertrude worth deserting for can’t ever die. I saw her in the border fields this very evening. She couldn’t go on, you see, without me. She had promised to wait around for me until----” “Silence, old nuisance,” Sin advised. “One doesn’t mention the Second Call in The Presence.” He need not have feared. His Majesty’s attention had returned to the girl-shade. A long moment he studied her; closed his eyes; quickly opened them to study her again. The puzzlement at first on his features changed to semi-recognition. “That look in your eyes---- What is it, that look? I seem to know you, woman, although I cannot place you. Do you remember having seen me before?” “I don’t think that I ever have seen you. But I’ve known men on Earth that resembled you.” Her voice was that of a cathedral bell retarding over the last phrase of the hymn. “It must be that I have trailed you afar, probably at the start of the career that brought you here. Let us see how you’re written down in Mors’ copy from the book.” Sin transferred the card from her clutch. With characteristic bravado, he read the start of it aloud. “Dolores Trent, Grief to Men, and bastard babe.” “What’s that you say?” With unwonted eagerness, Satan possessed himself of the passport. “That is quite a title, ‘Grief to Men.’ I like it.” He smiled peculiarly while giving his eyes to Earth’s verdict of the newcomer, as transcribed from that tome called “Judgments of Men” which is in charge of Mors, keeper of the Great Gates into Shadow Land. From between the two lines of his strong, white teeth, his tongue appeared and smoothed both lips. The girl-soul, with the equivocal expression of one both fascinated and repulsed, watched him as he read: “Dolores Trent, known as ‘Grief to Men.’ A cause of disaster from first breath to last. Her birth caused the death of her mother, whose loss brought her father to ruin. Directly responsible is she held for the wrecked careers of a successful merchant, an eminent Divine, a skilled healer, a previously exemplary millionaire, and an attorney of repute. As a climax, the supreme crime of womanhood is hers--an illegitimate child. Through life she has spread sorrow in her wake. Unto death she carries her murdered ill-begot, a suicide without repentance or appeal.” The King commented: “Æons have come and gone since I have felt surprise. Completely did that look of yours deceive me. And Raphael must have altered the face of his Madonna had he first seen yours.”