"Oh, I managed to give a prairie-like suggestion of openness to her living-room plan and I told her to make John reach for a few things. It would do him good and save her soul alive." "And she--what did she say to that?" "Oh, she laughed. She has such a pretty laugh. Good-night, brother." And then Lynda went upstairs to her quiet, dim room. It was a warmish night, with a moon that shone through the open space in the rear. The lot had not been built upon and the white path that had seemed to lure old William Truedale away from life now stretched before Lynda Kendall, leading into life. Whatever doubts and fears she had known were put away. In her soft thin dress, standing by the open window, she was the gladdest creature one could wish to see. And so Truedale found her. He knew that only one reason had caused Lynda to meet him as she was now doing. It was--surrender! Across the moon-lighted room he went to her with opened arms, and when she came to meet him and lifted her face he kissed her reverently. "I wonder if you have thought?" he whispered. "I have done nothing else in the ages since I last saw you, Con." "And you are not--afraid? You, who should have the best the world has to offer?" "I am not afraid; and I--have the best--the very best." Again Truedale kissed her. "And when--may I come home--to stay?" he asked presently, knowing full well that the old home must be theirs. Lynda looked up and smiled radiantly. "I had hoped," she said, "that I might have the honour of declining the little apartment. I'm so glad, Con, dear, that you want to come home to stay and will not have to be--forced here!" And at that moment Lynda had no thought of the money. Bigger, deeper things held her. "And--our wedding day, Lyn? Surely it may be soon." "Let me see. Of course I'm a woman, Con, and therefore I must think of clothes. And I would like--oh! very much--to be married in a certain little church across the river. I found it once on a tramp. There are vines running wild over it--pink roses. And roses come in early June, Con." "But, dearest, this is only--March." "I must have--the roses, Con." And so it was decided. Late that night, in the stillness of the five little rooms of the big apartment, Truedale thought of his past and his future. How splendid Lynda had been. Not a word of all that he had told her, and yet full well he realized how she had battled with it! She had accepted it and him! And for such love and faith his life would be only too short to prove his learning of his hard lesson. The man he now was sternly confronted the man he had once been, and then Truedale renounced the former forever--renounced him with pity, not with scorn. His only chance of being worthy of the love that had come into his life now, was to look upon the past as a stepping stone. Unless it could be that, it would be a bottomless pit. CHAPTER XVI