For fifteen minutes that would never come again they sat so, the girl’s left hand gripping the wine-colored box and the trinket which meant the ultimate surrender of her womanhood and heart forever. Her deft fingers toyed with the clasp. Her other hand gripped Gordon’s wrist. And that hand was cold. “And if I don’t come back, dear?” he said hoarsely at last. “Maybe, Gordon, I’ll wear no other ring—the rest of my life. Who knows?” “Perhaps, after all, dear girl, it’s better so.” “But even until I know, I shall have a little song in my heart, dear. I shall have a man at the wars. And he is a man! Of that there’s never a doubt. Not even now, to-night.” Verily in the life of every man, sooner or later, comes one white-hot moment when small things drop away. Prophets and seers are silenced and dismissed. The earth is without form and void. Darkness is often upon the face of the deep. With only great thoughts, great feelings, great decencies left in nakedness to give what help they can in that zero hour in Gethsemane, a man proves himself, not for what others have tried to make or unmake him, but for what he will be when God has returned and ordered there be light again. Gordon arose, that last night, that last hour, that last moment, alone with the girl he loved. And because his own happiness would perchance make that girl unhappy, at least cast a shadow upon her happiness, he accepted a great disappointment. And he never murmured. “I must go,” he said simply. The girl stood before him, pale and fine, exquisite and fragile, the biggest and best thing that had ever been in his life. Calm eyes were starry now. They were raised to his face. She was trying to smile. She could not send him away knowing she had not smiled. “Gordon!” “Yes, dear,” he answered huskily. “You may kiss me—if you will, Gordon. My lips are yours—just once—to-night—freely.” He stole his arms about her soft shoulders as though he feared to profane and desecrate a holy thing. She raised her sweet face to his, fearlessly, poignantly, softened with the parting. He kissed her. But it was not upon her lips. It was upon her fine, cold forehead. The choice had been his. He could have tasted her lips, but he did not want to remember them—so. He had changed much in the last few years. He went away without that memory to haunt him. He knew he had lost. Madelaine Theddon would never be his wife. II Gracia Theddon came home about eleven o’clock. Despite the iron gray in her hair, the years seemed to have had small effect upon her. She had changed little since that day at the Orphanage. But then, that might have been Madelaine and the great happiness she had found in her daughter. “Madelaine!” she cried, “the boys are entraining to-night! Gordon’s company! We should have been told, so we could have gone to the station to see them off—why, Madelaine!—what’s the matter, child?”