Betty shuddered at the mention of the word. “No,” she answered, shaking with emotion--“never have I been your sweetheart, and my grief is that I never realized how truly I did love Walter. He was ever present, dependable, and true. I felt that I could put out my hand in the dark and he was always there to guide and help me, yet I shunned that hand, and deliberately planned to ruin him--to ruin him--just as if I had been his worst enemy. The things one is sure of are the things one casts aside, and I, like a venturesome child, reached for those that were forbidden.” As she talked her breath came more evenly; the stricture around her heart relaxed, she leant back in the garden seat, as she felt her throat tighten and tears rising to her eyes. She could not keep them back; she was not strong enough. They fell and fell, and from time to time she brushed them away with her handkerchief. “Then you’ve stopped--loving me--my little boy has stopped loving me,” Jack repeated mechanically. “It was only an ephemeral love--can you forget it and me?” she asked, gently touching his arm. Like the balmy air of spring was the gentleness of her presence beside him, and, unrelenting as she was, it was enough that she was there. “And you’ll never be mine?” Jack added, turning again to look into the eyes that held the world for him. “No--I am married. My husband is dead, but I am married and always shall be. I was not true to him while I had him for my own, but the veil is lifted from my eyes and until we see each other again I am his. For God knows that I loved him.” At these words a peaceful expression settled upon the pale face, and Jack saw and realized that whatever of shallowness her nature had contained had been consumed in the flame of her tragedy. The real Betty was before him, showing the honesty, the nobility, of her true spirit--depth had taken the place of shallowness. She had lost and suffered and this made her still dearer to him, and sacred. He felt the urgings of his better nature bidding him to forget self in the presence of this sorrowing woman. And he saw that his love could not be--that his relationship to her henceforth would have to be on a more unselfish plane. They slowly retraced their steps through the aisle of poplars. “May I still be to you what Walter should have liked me to be?” asked Jack tenderly, and the answer came distinctly, “Yes, his friend and mine.” “THE WHITE PETAL” There never lived another man so utterly unreliable as Albert Wilbur. If he promised to be at a certain place at a certain time one could count definitely on his absence. But I never thought he would overlook an appointment as important as that which he had made to meet me at his country house on the night of August 3, 1919. The two Wilbur boys--John and his adopted brother, Albert--were from childhood my most intimate friends, and I often found it necessary to help Albert out of serious difficulties.