"I am not forgiving you because there is nothing to forgive. My pride was hurt and by yielding to it I shook your faith in me. It was weak for me to yield to pride; it was foolish for you to give way to suspicion. It was not I who yielded, Tom; it was that other girl, the girl who came to you to be hurt and ridiculed and made strong! And it was not the Tom Beck who loved me that suspected; it was that other man, the one who held himself back, who did not take chances, who, perhaps, would have denied himself the finest thing in life if he had always walked on ground with which he was familiar.... "And now to carry this breach from the past into the future.... Don't you see what a wrong that would be? Don't you see how you would be harming yourself? You, who wanted to die for me, would be refusing to live for me! And I who need you would walk alone.... Don't you see what a horrible thing that would be to both of us ... my lover?" She leaned forward, hands clasped at her breast, and the tears swam into her eyes. She was very beautiful, very gentle and tender, but as he looked he felt rather than saw the strength that was in her: the character that had stood alone, that had been herself in the face of the loss of love and position, and that, by so standing, had triumphed. For a breathless instant she poised so, with unsteady lips, and she saw the want come into his face, saw the old reserve, the old resolution to punish himself melt away. "I want you, Jane!" he whispered. * * * * * The evening shadows had come before she rose from her knees and drew up a chair to sit stroking his hand. His eyes rested on her hungrily and after a time they concentrated on the locket at her throat. "Say! Now that you've done me the honor to give me a second chance at lovin' you, there's somethin' I want to ask." "Ask it." "What's in that locket?" She laughed as she caught it in her fingers. "My luck!" "I understand that. It brought me luck, too, but there's something else. Won't you tell me?" She unclasped the trinket and held it in her hand, turning it over slowly. Then she sprung the catch and held it so he could see. Behind the disc of mica lay a piece of oat straw. "That is the last straw," she said simply. He did not understand. "The one you would not draw that day, which seems so long ago!" His face brightened. "You kept it?" "I clung to it as though it were ... the last straw! "Why, Tom, can't you see what it has meant? If you had drawn you would have been my foreman. You would have protected me, fought for me, taken care of me. I'd never have been forced to stand alone, never been forced to try to do something for myself, by myself. Your refusal put on me the responsibility of being a woman or a leech.... "I drew the last straw that day. I drew the responsibility of keeping the HC on its feet. I feel that I have helped to do that...." "You have."