"That's all, Roger. I wrote to her from New York, from Manitoba, from the ranch in Colorado, repeating my offer of marriage, but she has never answered me. You know the rest--" a slow and rather bitter smile crossed his features. "She goes about--with Lloyd--and others. She is gay. Her picture is in the papers and magazines--at hunt-meets--bazaars. She has forgotten--and I--No, I can never forget. She will dwell with me all the days I live. I can't forget or forgive--myself. Why, Roger, the Mission--the place that I'm giving money to support--to keep those women. You understand--I know now. _She_ might be one of them and I--I would have brought her there." I had been stricken dumb by the fearful revelation of Jerry's sin. I was silent, thinking of new words of comfort for him and for myself--for I was not innocent--but they would not come, and Jerry rose and walked the length of the room. "I've got to get away from it all again--somewhere. I can't stay here. Everything brings it all back. I'm going away." "Going, Jerry? Where?" "I don't know. I've made a kind of plan. But I mustn't tell. I don't want you to know or anyone. But I've got to leave here." He smiled a little as he saw the anxious look in my eyes. "Oh, don't worry. I'm going to be all right, I don't drink, you know." I think he was really a little proud of that admission. "Are you sure, Jerry," I asked after awhile, "that you care nothing for Marcia?" He took a turn up and down the room before he replied. And then, quite calmly: "It's curious, Roger. She has gone out of my life. Gone like--like a burned candle. I do not love her, nor ever could again, and yet I would marry her tomorrow if she would have me. I wrote her again yesterday, and I'm going to try to see her in New York. But I'll fail. My face would always be a reproach to her. I know. She is like that--bitter. I don't know that I can blame her." It was long past midnight. Jerry went to bed. But I sat oblivious of the passing hours, wide awake, somber, my gaze fixed upon the square of the window which turned from moonlight to dark and then at last shimmered with the dusk of the dawn. CHAPTER XXVII REVELATIONS It was at Jerry's request that I stayed on at Horsham Manor, working as I could upon my book, and now I think with a new knowledge of the meaning of life as I had learned it through Jerry's failure. I discovered comfort in the words of St. Paul, and prayed that out of spiritual death the seed of a new life might germinate. Jerry had told me nothing on leaving the Manor of his plans or purposes, and I made no move to seek him out, aware of a new confidence growing in me that wherever Jerry was, whatever he was doing, no new harm would come to him. He had found himself at last.