the house, then it was comforting to have near-by a companion unashamed to draw closer to her and confess himself humbled in the presence of the sea's majesty.

Oh, she was worlds better off with Prince Hal than if she were linked up with someone of her own genus who could not understand.

Besides, she was not going to be alone. She had decided to try an experiment.

Jason had had an orphaned niece out in the middle west—his sister's child—a girl in her early twenties, and Marcia had invited her to the island for a visit.

In fact, Sylvia was expected today.

That was why a bowl of pansies stood upon the table in the big bedroom at the head of the stairs, and why its fireplace was heaped with driftwood ready for lighting. That was also the reason Marcia now stood critically surveying her preparations.

The house did look welcoming. With justifiable pride, she confessed to herself that Heaven had bestowed upon her a gift for that sort of thing. She knew where to place a chair, a table, a lamp, a book, a flower.

She was especially desirous the old home should look its best today, for the outside world had contributed a richness of setting that left her much to live up to. Sylvia had never seen the ocean. She must love it. But would she? That was to be the test.

If the girl came hither with eyes that saw not; if the splendor stretched out before her was wasted then undeterred, she might go back to her wheat fields, her flat inland air, her school teaching.

If, on the other hand, Wilton's beauty opened to her a new heaven and a new earth, if she proved herself a good comrade—well, who could say what might come of it?

There was room, money, affection enough for two beneath the Homestead roof and Sylvia was alone in the world. Moreover, Marcia felt an odd sense of obligation toward Jason. At the price of his life he had given her back her freedom. It was a royal gift and she owed him something in return.

She was too honest to pretend she had loved him or mourned his loss. Soon after the beginning of their life together, she had discovered he was not at all the person she had supposed him. The gay recklessness which had so completely bewitched her and which she had thought to be manliness had been mere bombast and bravado. At bottom he was a braggart—small, cowardly, purposeless—a ship without a rudder.

Endowed with good looks and a devil-may-care charm, he had called her his star and pleaded his need of her, and she had mistaken pity for love and believed that to help guide his foundering craft into port was a heaven-sent mission.

Alas, she had over-estimated both her own power and his sincerity. Jason had no real desire to alter his conduct. He lacked not only the inclination but the moral stamina to do so. Instead, day by day he slipped lower and lower and, unable to aid him or prevent disaster, she had been forced to look on.

Her love for him was dead, and her self-conceit was dealt a humiliating blow.

She was to have been his anchor in time of stress, the planet by which when he married her he boasted that he intended to steer his course. But she had been forced to stand impotent at his side and see self-respect, honor, and every essential of manhood go down and he shrivel to a fawning, deceitful, ambitionless wreck.

Sometimes she reproached herself for the tragedy and, scrutinizing the past, wondered whether she might not have prevented it. Had she done her full part; been as patient, sympathetic, understanding as she ought to have been? Did his defeat lay at her door?

With the honesty characteristic of her, she could not see that it did. She might, no doubt, have played her role better. One always could if given a second chance. Nevertheless she had tried, tried with every ounce of strength in her—tried and failed!

Well, it was too late for regrets now. Such reflections belonged to the past and she must put them behind her as useless, morbid abstractions. Her back was set against the twilight; she was facing the dawn—the dawn with its promise of happier things.

Surely that magic, unlived future touched with hope and dim with the prophecy of the unknown could not be so unfriendly as the past had been. It might bring pain; but she had suffered pain and no longer feared it. Moreover, no pain could ever be as poignant as that which she had already endured.

And why anticipate pain? Life held joy as well—countless untried experiences that radiated happiness. Were there not a balance between sunshine and shadow this world would be a wretched place in which to live, and its Maker an unjust dealer.

No, she believed not only in a fair-minded but in a generous God and she had faith that he was in his Heaven.

She had paid for her folly—if indeed folly it had been. Now with optimism and courage she looked fearlessly forward. That was why, as she caught up her hat, a smile curled her lips.

The house did look pretty, the day was glorious. She was a-tingle with eagerness to see what it might bring.

Calling Prince Hal, she stood before him.

"Take good care of the house, old man," she admonished, as she patted his silky head. "I'll be home soon."

He followed her to the piazza and stopped. His eyes pleaded to go, but he understood his orders and obeying them lay down with paws extended, the keeper of the Homestead.

Chapter III

The train was ten minutes late, and while she paced the platform at Sawyer Falls, the nearest station, Marcia fidgeted.

She had never seen any of Jason's family. At first a desultory correspondence had taken place between him and his sister, Margaret; then gradually it had died a natural death—the result, no doubt, of his indolence and neglect. When the letters ceased coming, Marcia had let matters take their course.

Was it not kinder to allow the few who still loved him to remain ignorant of what he had become and to remember instead only as the dashing lad who in his teens had left the farm and gone to seek his fortune in the great world?

She had written Margaret a short note after his death and had received a reply expressing such genuine grief it had more than ever convinced her that her course had been the wise and generous one. What troubled her most in the letter had been its outpouring of sympathy for herself. She detested subterfuge and as she read sentence after sentence, which should have meant so much and in reality meant so little, the knowledge that she had not been entirely frank had brought with it an uncomfortable sense of guilt. It was not what she had said but what she had withheld that accused her.

Marcia Howe was no masquerader, and until this moment the hypocrisy she had practiced had demanded no sustained acting. Little by little, moreover, the pricking of her conscience had ceased and, fading into the past, the incident had been forgotten. Miles of distance, years of silence separated her from Jason's relatives and it had been easy to allow the deceit, if deceit it had been, to stand.

But now those barriers were to be broken down and she suddenly realized that to keep up the fraud so artlessly begun was going to be exceedingly difficult. She was not a clever dissembler.

Moreover, any insincerity between herself and Sylvia would strike at the very core of the sincere, earnest companionship she hoped would spring up between them. Even should she be a more skillful fraud than she dared anticipate and succeed in playing her role convincingly, would there not loom ever before her the danger of betrayal