“If they are genuine, respect for the dead and mercy to the living require that they should be suppressed and destroyed,” Mrs. Phelps had said of “papers written _a little while_ before Marion’s death.” His word was pledged. But what name would he see if he reversed the sheet before destroying it? With a bound of the heart that would have assured him, had proof been needed, what his bonnie living girl-love was to him, he put away all tender memories of the dead, false betrothed. He had worshipped and mourned the thinnest of shadows. He might owe respect――abstractly――to the dead, but no reverence to a wild dream from which he had been awakened. Who was the “living” to whom he was entreated to show mercy? Where was the man who had first robbed him, then let him play the sad-visaged dupe and fool, while the heyday of youth slipped forever beyond his reach? To learn that――to remember the name with execration――to despise with the full force of a wronged and honest soul――perhaps to brand him as a cur and blackguard, should he ever cross his path――would not break his word. Was it not his right――the poor rag of compensation he might claim for the incalculable, the damnable evil the traitor had wrought? He would confess to Salome’s mother to-morrow――but this one thing he would do. He stooped for the letter. “Peace! let him rest! God knoweth best! And the flowing tide comes in! And the flowing tide comes in!” It was only his beloved stepmother on her nightly round of nursery and Gerald’s chamber, singing to her guileless self in passing her stepson’s door to prove her serenity of spirit; but Rex staggered back into his seat, put his elbows on his knees and covered his face with his hands. He smelled the balsam-boughs slanting to the water, the trailing arbutus Salome wore in her belt; heard the waves lapping the prow and sides of the bounding boat. God’s glorious heaven was over them, and the sun was rising, after a long, long night, in his heart. The fresh, tender young voice told the tale of love and loss and patient submission.... Aye, and could not he, affluent in heaven’s best blessings, loving and beloved by the noble, true daughter of the Christian heroine who expected her “son” to stand fast by his plighted word――the almost husband of a pure, high-souled woman――afford to spare the miserable wretch whose own mind and memory must be a continual hell? He pitied, he almost forgave him, as he took up the sheets from the floor, the scrap of paper from the table, and, averting his eyes lest the signature might leap out at him from the twisting flame, laid them under the forestick and did not look that way again until nothing was left of them but cinder and ashes. Illustration: (‡ decoration) MARY ABIGAIL DODGE. THE FAMOUS ESSAYIST, CRITIC, AND NOVELIST, “GAIL HAMILTON.”