to deceive myself into the belief that this would be done; you see how I have failed?"
Raising her eyes full to his, but dropping them after the briefest gaze, she said, timidly:
"Why have you come back?"
"I have come back to mend the broken troth-*plight; I have come back to be forgiven," he answered, humbly.
"You have come back to find a wasted youth, a tired woman who has been the victim of a lie, told in the dark, with the seeming verity of intimate friendship. You have come back to find me stabbed by a thousand disappointments, striving with grim indifference, learning to accept, unquestioning, the bitter stone of resignation for my daily bread. I would scarce venture now to spread poor stunted wings that life has clipped so closely that they bleed when they flutter even toward the smallest hope."
He fiercely cried, and clinched his hands together, with one consuming glance at her:
"I was to blame, Cherokee, for believing that you had promised to marry Fred Stanhope; Willard Frost is charged with this as well"—he bit his lips hard.
"And it was to the same man that I owe the death of innocence." Her voice was scarcely more than a whisper.
