womanlike, was still doubting. But the moving picture which the papers of succeeding days had reeled before her eyes as her train sped westward; the solemn face of Rose, the teary eyes of Tayna, whom she had found sitting at the foot of the stairs outside; and now this glimpse of that stooping, passionately despairing, hopelessly broken figure were enough to banish doubt forever. They testified that John Hampstead, in the soul of him, was true—to love as to duty—that he had burned out the scar of his first disloyalty to her in the fires of intense suffering.
Her radiant beauty, the soft, trusting blue of her eyes, the wonderful witchery of smiling lips and dimpling cheeks, the proud, happy, worshipful look upon her face, all proclaimed the bounding joy with which she hurled herself again into his life.
John perceived this in ecstasy. Bessie was not lost to him, but won to him by what had happened. The mere perception threw him into a frenzy of joy, and yet it was a reversal of probabilities so sudden and so overwhelming that he dared not accept it unattested.
"But, Bessie," he protested. "But, Bessie?"
"But nothing!" she answered stoutly, flinging her arms once more about his neck and drawing his lips down to hers, while she passionately stamped them again and again with the seal of her love and faith.
With the submission of a child, and under the stimulus of such convincing, such deliciously thrilling demonstration as this, the strong-weak man surrendered unconditionally to an acceptance of facts at once so undeniable and so excitingly happy.
But the articles of surrender could not be signed in words. He drew her close to him and held her there long and silently, feeling his heart beat violently against her own, and at the same time his tissues filling with new and glowing strength. A sigh from Bessie, softly audi-
