“Dear Mother!” she said in a low tearful voice. “And now one more. Papa has been dinning into my ears his own fickleness in love when young and the fact that he knows in a long life that love is of little importance in a man’s existence. He says that I can forget and love again with equal intensity and bet’ter judgment. Can one treat thus lightly the soul’s deepest instincts and still find life rich and worthy of effort?” Her voice broke and she continued slowly and tremblingly, as she held one of her mother’s hands tightly, “Now, Mama dear, heart to heart, tell me as you would talk in your inmost soul to God, do you believe this is true? You have sounded life’s deep meaning Is this all you know of life? You love me. Tell me truly?” “No, darling, a woman can not deny this deep yearning of her soul and live. I would tear my tongue out sooner than deceive you in such an hour.” “Sweet Mother!” she softly murmured again as she kissed her good night. CHAPTER XII--THE SPLENDOUR OF SHAMELESS LOVE WHEN Gaston received her telegram in jail he was seated by a window looking out through the bars on Mt. Pisgah’s distant peak looming in grandeur amid a sea of smaller blue mountain waves. He read the message and his soul was filled with a great peace. “At last! at last! These prison bars, they are good! I could kiss them. I can never be grateful enough to my enemies!” He had taken his prison as a joke from the first, sneering at the judge who had committed him. He knew that every day he stayed in that jail he was becoming more and more the master of the people. If McLeod had tried he could not have played into his hands with more fatal certainty. Five hundred citizens of Independence had wired him their congratulations and offered him any assistance he desired, from unlimited money for defence to a delegation to tear the jail down. He declined any assistance. He knew the storm would break over their heads soon enough, and they would be delighted to get rid of him. In the meantime he gave himself up to his thoughts about the woman he loved, and wondered what change had suddenly come over her to send him that message. He felt sure the great crisis in their life had come. What would it be? A sorrowful surrender on her part to her father’s iron will and a tearful good-bye forever, or the full surrender of her woman’s soul and body to the dominion of his love? He was glad the hour had struck that should decide. He trembled at the import of her answer but he was ready to receive it. A carriage rolled into the jail enclosure and two young ladies alighted. One of them stopped in the sitting room for visitors, and he heard the tramp of a man’s heavy feet on the stairs and after it the tread of a woman like a soft echo. The key grated in the lock, the door opened. She looked into his eyes for just an instant of searching soul revelation, saw the yearning and the grateful tears, and with a glad cry sprang into his arms.