"Ah, my love," she went on, as though she had not heard his last words, "if you were frankly evil as other men, I might bear this shame with better grace. Others before me, as good as I, have borne its burden. But when I think that you are making your sin a religion, and that you are going to preach with the zeal of a prophet this gospel of the brute and call it freedom, how can I bear it?" They were both silent for a moment. "Let us change this disgusting subject, Frank," she said at length. "I wish you to leave with something kindlier to remember in my face than this shadow. You see, I have taken your pictures all down and locked them up. I have placed your clothes, all I could spare, in your trunk--for even these little things to me are heart treasures now. I could not let you take the slippers I have made for you with my own hands, or your dressing-gowns. That woman shall never touch them. The marriage certificate, with the little poem written to me on the birth of Lucy, I've packed up, too, with your pictures. I've put them away, because, just now, it would break my heart to look at them after this parting with you. When I come back from the South I will be stronger, and I will bring them out again. Your ring is mine until God's hand shall take it. I'll teach our babies always to love you." Her voice broke, and he looked away. "I will tell them that you have gone on a long journey into a strange country, and that you will come back again because you love them." He stirred uneasily in his chair, crossed his legs and frowned. "And I wish you to leave me to-day with the certainty--you can read it in my eyes, if you doubt my lips--that I will love you to the end, though you kill me. You can go on no journey so long, in no world so strange, that I shall not follow. My soul will envelop you. For better, for worse, through evil report and good report, I am yours." Again a convulsive sob shook her, and she was silent. Gordon felt an almost resistless impulse to take her in his arms and kiss and soothe her. Through her tears she smiled at him. "How beautiful you are, my dear! You will not forget that I love you? The spring, the summer, the autumn, the winter will only bring to me messages from our past. The way will be lonely, but the memory of the touch of your hand, our hours of perfect peace and trustfulness, the sweetness of your kisses on my lips, the living pictures of your face in our children, I will cherish." He stooped to kiss her as he left, but she drew back trembling. "No, Frank, not while your lips are warm with the touch of another and your flesh on fire with desire for her. It will be sweet to remember that you wished it--for I know, what you do not, that deep down in your soul of souls you love me. I will abide God's time." He left her with a smile playing around her sensitive mouth and lighting the shadows of her great dark eyes. CHAPTER XVII THE THOUGHT THAT SWEEPS THE CENTURY