"Let me!" she said at last in a whisper that his pulses leaped to meet. "It was there--when I was a nurse. He was a patient. Before he left, he asked me to marry him. When I went to him he told me he was married already. Till then there had been no hint, not the faintest suspicion--I went to him, with the knowledge of them all, to be his wife." "Thank God!" said Kincaid in his throat. "She was--she had been on the streets; he hadn't seen her for years. He prayed to me, implored me----Oh, I'm trying to exonerate! myself, I'm not trying to shift the sin on to him, I but if the truest devotion of her life can plead I for a woman, Heaven knows that plea was mine!" "And at the end of the three years?" "There was news of her death, and he married someone else." She got up abruptly, and moved to the window, looking out behind the blind. "I can't tell you how I feel for you," he said huskily. "I can't give you an idea how deeply, how earnestly I sympathise!" "Don't say anything," she murmured; "you needn't try; I think I understand to-night--you proved your sympathy while my claim on it was least." "And you'll let me help you?" The slender figure stood motionless; behind her the man was gripping the leather of his chair. "If I may," she said constrainedly, "if I can go there like--as you----Ah, if the past can all be buried and there needn't be any reminder of what has been?" "I'll be everything you wish, everything you'd have me seem!" He took a sudden step towards her. She turned, her eyes humid with tears, with thankfulness--with entreaty. He stopped short, drew back, and resumed his seat. "Now, what is it you were saying about Ellen?" he asked shortly. And perhaps it was the most eloquent avowal he had ever made her of his love. CHAPTER XII So it happened that Mary Brettan did not leave Westport the next week. And after a few months she was more than ever doubtful if she would leave it at all. The suggested vacancy on the permanent staff had occurred before then, and, once having accepted the post, there seemed to be no inducement to woo anxiety by resigning it.