"No--" Cherry said, drawing a long, long sigh. "Oh Magnus! you were not true to yourself." "Never mind me," Magnus answered unreasonably. "I don't want you for a missionary. If I've got to have one, call in some old wrinkled specimen that will not distract my mind. If you don't care anything about me except to get me creditably out of the world, why, say so. I have told you all the worst things about myself. And if you are willing to work it as we always did; I carrying you over the hard places, and you brushing the mud off with your own little hands--you can say that, too." "Oh, Magnus!" she cried, "there must not be any mud." "There must not be, and there isn't going to be; but what if there was? We can't have the marriage service made over just for us two, I suppose. I mean it shall be for better and better, every day I live--but you've got to _take_ me 'for better, for worse.'" I fancy few men have any faint notion what it is to a woman to have her image of perfection marred; perhaps men less often set up ideals, unless in the line of beauty; and that is altogether a lower erection. To see "fragile" written on your tower of strength, and the hero marked "human," in unmistakable letters, is a very, very sharp lesson. A good one, though; the sooner that form of idolatry ceases the better; letting the woman down--or up--to her proper station of helpmeet. Cherry's heart was ringing yet with the ache and the sorrow, her eyes dazed with this sudden mortal light let in upon the world of dreams and imaginations. Her love was not changed, she knew that; as it had gone out to the hero, so still it went out to the man, and would, while her life lasted. No question to settle there. But now another was stirring in the girl's heart, coming on a sudden uncalled for, unwelcome--and the old words of the apostle confronted her: "And the wife see that she reverence her husband." Could she do that? For suppose-- Cherry could not put the thought in actual black and white, even to herself, but none the less she heard it speak. He had been tempted once--what if it happened again, or again? And now the girl lifted her head and looked at him, as if to spell out the answer; never guessing how she looked. Wistful, questioning, eager; a look so pathetic in its love and sorrow that Magnus had all he could do to sit still and bear it. But then Cherry turned away again, and dropping her face in her hands cried and sobbed as if she had never cried before. "That means, you give me up," Magnus said, struggling with himself. "You have no use for me any more; and I may go to Jericho or the moon, as I like best. Well, it is natural, I suppose. What could you want with anyone who had even once given way? I shall never blame you, Cherry. But, stop crying, dear heart! It's hard lines for a man to be killed two ways at once. Cherry--stop! Do you hear?"