changed completely, and her manner was both cold and distant. Finally, one evening, she came to him, and, after a few preliminaries, announced her intention of visiting Miss Stuart at her home in town. This brief announcement aroused Guy's quick temper, and before he realized what had happened, bitter words had been spoken, and Helen had swept out of the room.

The following day she left for town. When a week had passed without a line from her, Guy could endure it no longer and sought an interview, battling with his indignation at the thought that it must take place under Miss Stuart's roof.

Many a time afterward he tried to recall the exact words that were spoken on that memorable occasion, but everything seemed unreal to him, save Helen's face, pale with the determination not to accede to his wishes. Finally, he could recall asking her if she desired her freedom. Alas, poor Guy! The quick spontaneity of her response shattered his last hope.

"Ah, yes, Guy, please. We will be so much better friends, then."

"Friends!" he echoed bitterly; "after all these years."

Helen put her hand on his shoulder, but he gently pushed her from him.

"It is as well I should know the truth now as later. You do not love me, Helen. There is nothing left now, but for us to part."

When he was leaving a sudden recollection came to him of the cause of all this unhappiness, and crushing down his own bitterness, he endeavored in quiet and carefully chosen words to dissuade her from a friendship which he feared she would rue, but she maintained an almost unbroken silence, and the expression of her face told him that his warning was of no avail. So they parted.

Guy was more than justified in his distrust of Lillian Stuart. Had he been a man of less delicate sense of honor he could have righted himself in Helen's eyes by simply relating to her some incontrovertible facts; but the circumstances which had given him his knowledge sealed his lips.

While at college, the name, Lillian Stuart, had grown familiar to him, through hearing her praises sounded by his chum Nelson Leonard. The year after their graduation they ran across each other at Baden, and their college friendship was resumed. Guy was not long in discovering that there was something radically wrong with his friend, and the cause, which all Baden apparently understood, was soon made clear to him.

Among the most noted people frequenting Baden at this time, were a Mrs. Ogden-Stuart and her beautiful daughter. It had been understood on their arrival that Miss Stuart was engaged to the good-looking American, Mr. Leonard, who was traveling in their party. This fact, however, did not seem to stand in the way of her flirting openly with every eligible man in the place, nor prevent her from receiving their constant homage. Leonard was evidently wretched, and there was a touch of recklessness in his manner, which, Guy felt, boded no good to a man of his highly strung, sensitive nature. For a week after Guy's arrival things drifted on, but there was something in the air that seemed to foretell a crisis. Guy had been presented to Miss Stuart, but in spite of her beauty and fascination found nothing in her to like or respect. This Miss Stuart felt instinctively, and as she was accustomed to admiration, it stung her into a desire to win something more than indifference from Leonard's friend. Her efforts were totally unsuccessful, and, as her treatment of her lover became less and less loyal, Guy withdrew altogether from her society, showing her no further courtesy than an occasional bow of recognition. In the meantime Miss Stuart's latest affair, with a certain Frenchman of unenviable reputation, was giving Baden food for gossip and keeping it on the qui vive for a scandal.

Late one afternoon, while Guy sat on the veranda reading letters from home, Miss Stuart and Leonard passed him. The girl's face wore a mocking smile, her eyes a taunt; Leonard was white as death, and his lips twitched piteously. Guy's own face grew stern as he looked up at them, and when Miss Stuart threw him a careless word in salutation he could scarcely frame a civil reply.

That evening Leonard went to Guy's room, and flinging himself down in a chair, gave voice for the first time to his misery.

"I tell you, Appleton," he exclaimed, with a hard laugh, "I shall throw up the game pretty soon. I may be a coward; but it takes more courage than I have to face this thing any longer."

Guy was more startled than he cared to reveal by his friend's passionate, despairing vehemence; and he made an effort to treat the matter lightly and to divert Leonard's thoughts, but his efforts were not crowned with success. When Leonard had left him he paced up and down the room, revolving in his mind what step he should take. At length he determined to go to Miss Stuart, and appeal to her, hoping that so direct a course would result favorably.

He began the interview awkwardly, feeling that his presumption was almost unwarrantable, but when she met his earnest plea for his friend first with indifference, and then with undisguised amusement, he found his anger rising.

"I do not think you can realize Leonard's condition of mind, Miss Stuart," he said darkly. "If you would only put an end to this once for all, I am sure that he is man enough to go away from you and try to live down his disappointment; but he has a peculiarly excitable and sensitive temperament, and if you continue to torture him in this way, I fear you will have his death at your door."

"I am sorry to say," she replied lightly, "that our friend is a fool now," looking up at him with a glance strangely deep and subtle, "if he were half the man you are——"

"I have nothing further to say," Guy interrupted, flushing with indignation and disgust, and without another word he abruptly left her.

Two days later all Baden was shocked by the startling news that young Nelson Leonard had accidentally shot himself and was lying at the point of death.

Those melancholy hours of watching by Leonard's bedside, in that dreary hotel room, lived in Guy's memory. When the doctor's sad verdict was pronounced, the dying man pleaded to be left alone with his friend.

"Ah, dear old fellow," he said gently, when they were alone, "pretty well done—for an accident? Forgive me," he murmured, as he caught a sharp look of pain in Guy's face. "Forgive——" his voice faltered, and his head fell wearily back on the pillow.

Then the poor boy's mind wandered, and Lillian Stuart's name was constantly on his lips. In broken, halting sentences a pitiful story of deception and disappointment was revealed to Guy—a story which would be sacred to him to his life's end, and, as he listened, his whole soul revolted against the woman who had so willfully trifled with this man's tender, loyal heart. Before morning dawned, Nelson Leonard's eyes had closed forever on a life which he had found too difficult for him. When the sad affair was over, Guy would fain have left Baden at once, but he was obliged to await there the arrival of Leonard's family from America.

In the days that ensued Lillian Stuart was markedly subdued, but if she had any suspicion of the real truth concerning Leonard's death she never betrayed it by word or look. She did all in her power to overcome Guy's aversion for her, but he sternly repulsed her. To attempt conciliation was a new rôle for Miss Stuart, and his cold disregard of all her efforts was the severest wound her vanity had ever received.

Such a slight is not readily forgiven or forgotten by a woman of her type. So when Guy Appleton once more crossed her path, and she found, in his deep love for Helen, his vulnerable point, she felt that her day of triumph had come.