tously,—a dream of Bessie; that she was coming to him; that she was there. It was such a beautiful dream. It took all the strain out of the muscles of his face. It tickled the flabby mouth into smiles of happiness. It triumphed over everything else. It made every experience through which he had gone seem a high and beautiful experience because it brought him Bessie.
A knock at the door awoke him. It was such a cruel awakening. Bessie was not there. His cheeks were hard and stiff where tears had dried upon them. His shoulders and neck ached from the position in which he had slept. The rug was rumpled. The room was bleak and desolate. The breeze was chill and gloomy. The situation in which he stood came to him again with appealing acuteness and stung his memory like scourging whips. He rose with pain in his mind, pain in his heart, pain in every tissue of his body.
But there are worse things than pain. John was appalled to realize that he had risen a quaking coward.
The knock had sounded again. It was a soft knock, but it echoed loud, like the crack of doom. It stood for the outside world; it stood for the accusing finger; it stood for the felon's brand; it stood for the great monster, Ruin, which threatened him, which terrorized him, which he had faced courageously, but which at last through the workings of his own morbid imagination and the tentacles of a great love, torn blood-dripping from his heart, had over-awed him. Before this monster he now shrank, cowering as only six days before he had seen Rollie Burbeck cower. He said to himself that he, John Hampstead, was the greater coward. Rollie had faltered in the face of his crime. He, the priest of God, was faltering in the face of his duty. He retreated from his own presence aghast at the thought. He looked about him wildly, and saw his features in the glass. It was a coward's face. He felt
