With him, ambition was tempered by love for her and the certainty that he could not leave her even to win fame and fortune. When he allowed himself to think of her alone in the cottage, looking sadly at the stars and thinking of him in the rushing city, he said to himself: "I can't leave her!" Both knew, although neither spoke it aloud, that if he went, he would have to go alone. Justine understood his hesitation and its cause. She knew that she was holding him back, that she alone kept him from making the plunge into the world, and her heart was sore. Night after night she lay awake in his arms, her poor heart throbbing against his ambitious heart, writhing beneath the certain knowledge that she was the weight about his neck. One day, late in the fall, when the strain upon her heart had become too great, she broke the fetters. It was at dusk, and, coming around the corner of the cottage, she found him sitting on the doorstep, his gaze far away, his dejection showing in the droop of the broad shoulders. A little gasp of pain came from her lips--pain mingled with love and pity for him. She stood for a moment, reading his thoughts as if they were printed before her eyes--thoughts of fame, honor, success, trial, chance! How good, how handsome, how noble he was! She was the weight, the drag! The hour had come for her to decide. He would never say the word--that much she knew. "Jud," she said, standing bravely before him. He looked up, shaking off his dream. "Don't you think it about time you were trying your luck in Chicago? You surely have worked hard enough at your drawing, and I don't see why you put it off any longer." For a moment he was unable to speak. Into his eyes came a blur of tears. "But, Justine, dear, how are we to live there? They say it takes a fortune," he said. There was a breath of eagerness in his voice and she detected it. She sat beside him and laid her arm about his shoulder. He turned his face to hers, wondering, and their eyes met. For a long time neither spoke by tongue, but they understood. A sob came into his throat as he lifted her hand from her lap and drew her to him almost convulsively. "Justine, I can't do that! I can't go away off there and leave you here alone. Why, sweetheart, I'd die without you," he cried. "But when you are able, dear, to take me to you in the great city, we can be the happiest people in the world," she said huskily. "I'll be lonesome and you'll be lonesome, but it won't be for long. You will succeed. I know it, dear, and you must not waste another day in this wilderness----" "It is the sweetest place in the world," he cried, passionately. "Wilderness? With you here beside me? Oh, Justine, it will be wilderness if I go away from you!"