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Show I . J II ! II 111 I Vwf-U Story tfNCciHaitJWs ) V xBx (xCyrfg IjHjffj PrAy, i . 1 k- W Anther cTlWH s.Ve troiuayV As X s, SparU V. , 'JlItrt fe.lswort Young , " ten. Who waa he? Waa he yet Alive? Had be any part to play In tbla strange tragedy aside from that he had already assayed? Sometimes an answer to a secret query U made ofenly. At tbla Juncture Junc-ture Newbold came bark. lie slopped before her unateadlly, hla face now marked not only by the fierceness fierce-ness of the storm outside, but by the fiercer grapple of the storm In hlg heart "You have a right," be began, "to know everything now. I ran withhold with-hold nothing from you." He bad In hla hand a picture and something yellow that gleamed In the light. "There," he continued extending ex-tending them toward her, "Is the picture pic-ture of the poor woman who loved ghost of suspicion to enter my mind It may have been a brother, or bei father In hla youth." "And why did you wear It?" "Because I took It from her deaf heart. Home day I ahali find out wh the man Is and when I ahull I know there will be nothing to her discredit In the knowledge." Enid Maltlmid nodded her bead She closed the locket, laid It on tb table and pushed It away from her. So this was the man the woman bad loved, who had begged her to ge away with him. this handaomo Ann-strong Ann-strong who had come within an ace of winning her own affection, to whom she was In some measure pledged! How strangely does fate work out 14 SYNOPSIS. Cnld Maltland, a frank, fro and unspoiled un-spoiled you tin I'hatladelphla gtrl, I taken to tha Colorado mountain by her uu;l, Kobrt Ualtland. Jamea Armetron;, M altlarid'e proteg, fall In iova with hr. Jll persistent wooIiik thrills tha trtrl, but ah healtatea. and Ariiiatrotig kowi at on bualneaa without a d-nint answer. Enid heara th story of a mining ensl-lr, ensl-lr, Newbold. whuw wlfa Ml off a tilff and waa ao seriously hurt that ha waa comptlled to about hr to prevent tier Vain Va-in atn by wolvea while ha went for hulp. Klrkby, the old guide who toll tha story, alvaa Enid a package of letter which Ti aays war found on the dead Woman'a body. Bh red tha latter and at Klrkby's request kerp them. While bathing In mountain trearn Knld l attacked at-tacked by a bear, which la myeterlouely shot. A storm adda to tha alrl a terror. A sudden deluge transforms brook Into rasing torrent, which aweepa Knld Into gorge, where aha la readied by a mountain moun-tain hsrmlt aftar a thrtlllng axperli-nra. Camtmra In friat ennfualon upon dlsoov-ln dlsoov-ln Knld'a alMHnc when tha slorm breaks. Maltland and Old Klrkby go In search of tha !rt. Enid dlacovers that her ankla la apralned and that aha la un-abla un-abla to walk. Her myaterloua reai-uer carries her to his camp. Knld goes to sleep In the atranss man's bunk. Miner Conks break f ant for Knld, after which thay eo on tour of Inspection. Th hermit her-mit tells Enid of his unaui-ceasful attempt to find the Maltland campers. He admits that h la alm from Philadelphia. The hermit falls In love with Knld. Th man cornea to a realisation of hi love for her, but naturaliy In that stranu aolltude the relations of the slrl and her reecucr Income In-come unnatural and atrained. The etranic-er etranic-er tell uf a wife he had who is d.ad. and says ha has aworn to ever rherlah her mmory bv llvlns; In solitude. He and Enid, however, confess their love for each other, (the learns that he la th man who killed his wlfa In the mountain. CHAPTER XVI (Continued). "Oh, Ood! Oh. God!" be cried In hla humiliation and shame, "If I had only met you flrat, or If my wife bad died aa others die, and not by my hand la that awful hour. I can aee her now, broken, brultsed, bleeding, torn. I can bear the report of that weapon; her last glance at me In the midst of her Indescribable agony was one of thankfulness and gratitude. 1 can't stand It, I am unworthy even of her." "Out you could not help It, It waa cot your fault And you can't help caring for roe" ) "l ought to help It, I ought not love ' you, I ought to have known that I was not fit to love any woman, that I bad no right, that I waa pledged like a monk to the past I have been weak, a fool. 1 love you and my honor hon-or goea, I love you and my self respect goes, I love you and my pride goea. Would to God I could aay I love you and uiy life goea and end It all." He Such fierce surges of Joy throbbed through him aa he had not thought the human frame could auaialn. Tbla woman loved hlrn, In some atrange way be bad gained her affection. It waa Impossible, yet ahe had sold eol lie had been a blind fool. He could aee Unit now. She stood before him and smiled up at him, looking at him through eyes misted with teara, with Hpa parted, with color coming and going go-ing In her check and with her boaom rising and falling. Sho loved him, be had but to atep nearer to her to take her In his arms. There was a trust, devotion, surrender, everything. In her attitude, and between them like that great gulf which lay between the rich man and the beggar, that separated heaven and bell, waa that be could not cross. "I never dreamed, 1 never hoped oh," be eiclalmed aa If he got bla dath wound, "this cannot be borne." He turned away but in two swift steps ahe caught him. "Where do you go?" "Out, out Into the night" "You cannot go now, It is dark; hark to the atorm, you would mls your footing you would fall, you would freeze, you would die." "WbHt matters that?" "I cannot have It" "It would be better ao." He strove again to wrench himself away, but ahe would not be denied. Bhe clung to him tenaciously. "I will not let you go unless you give me your word of honor that you will not leave the plateau, and that you will come back to me." "1 tell you that the quicker and more surely I go out of life, the happier hap-pier and. better It will be for you." "And I tell you," said the woman resolutely, "that you can never go out of my life again, living or dead." She released htm with one band and laid It upon her heart "You are here." "Enid," cried the man. "No," ahe thrust him gently away with one band yet detained him with the other -that waa emblematic of the situation between them: '""Not now, not yet, let me think, but promise prom-ise me you will do yourself no barm, you will let nothing Imperil your life." "Aa you will," said the man regretfully. regret-fully. "I had purposed to end it now and forever, but I promise." "Your word of hoporf "My word of honor." She Was Utterly Unable to Suppress an Exclamation, knew them by heart, ahe bad read an reread them often when ahe had bee alone. They had faaclnated hei They were letters from acme otbe man to this man'a wife. They wer signed by an Initial only and the ldt tlty of the writer waa quite unknow to her. The woman'a repllea wer not with the otbera, but It waa eas enough to see what those replies ba been. All the passion of which th woman bad been capable had ev detitly been bestowed upon the write of the letters she had treasured. Her story was quite plain. Sli had married Newbold In I SI pique. He waa an eastern man, th best educated, the must faaclnatlu and interesting of the men who frt quented the camp. There had been quarrel between the letter writer an the woman; there were always quai rela, apparently, but tbla had been serious one and the man had savagel. flung away and loft her. He had no come back aa he usually did. She ha waited for him and then be had conn back too late! He had wanted to kill the other, bu she had prevented, and while Newboli was away be had made desperate lov. to her. He had besought her t leave her husband to go away will him. He had used every argumen that be could to that end and the wc man had hesitated and wavered, bu he bad not consented; ebe had no denied her love for him any more thai she had denied her respect and i certain admiration for her gallant trusting husband. She had reruset again and again the requests of he lover. She could not control he heart, nevertheless ahe had kept tt her marriage vows. Hut the force o her reslHtance had grown weaker ant she bad realised that alone ahe woult perhaps Inevitably succumb. Her lover had been away when be husband returned prior to the la fateful Journey. Enid Maltland aav now why abe had besought him, .ti take her with him, ahe was afraid tt be left alone! She did not dare d pend upon ber own powers any more; her only salvation was to go with thli man whom she did not love, whom a llmea abe almoat hated, to keeproni falling Into the arms of the man ( did love. She had been more or leai afraid of Newbold. She had soon realized, because she was not blinded by any paasion aa be, that tbey had been utterly mlcmated. She bad come to understand that when the same knowledge of the truth came to him, as It Inevitably must some day, nothing noth-ing but unbapplness would be their portion. Every kind of an argument In addition ad-dition to those so passionately adduced ad-duced In these letters urging her to break away from ber husband and to aeek happiness for herself while yet there waa time, besieged ber heart, seconded her lover's plea and assailed her will, and yet she had not given way. Now Enid Maltland hated the wo-man wo-man who had enjoyed the first young love of the man she 'herself loved. She hated her because of her priority of possession, because her memory yet enrae between her and that man. She hated her because Newbold was still true to her memory, because Newbold. believing in the greatness of her palnn for him. thought It shame and dishonor to his manhood to be false to her. no matter what love and longing drew him on. Yet there was a atern sense of Justice Jus-tice In the bosom of this young woman. wo-man. She exulted In the successful battle the poor woman had made for the preswvatlon of her honor and her good name, against such odds. It was a sex triumph for which she was glad. She was proud of her for the stern rigor with which she had refused to take the earlest way and the desperation desper-ation with which she had clung to him the did not love, but to whom she waa bound by the laws of Ood ami msn, In order that ahe might not fall Into the arma of the man she did lore. In defiance of r'ght. Enid Maltland and this woman were as far remjved from each other as the opposite poles of ,ve earth, but there was yet a common quality In each one of virtuous womanhood, of lofty morality. Natural, perhaps In the one and to be be eipected; unnatural, un-natural, perhaps, and to be unexpect ed In t je other, but there! Now that abe knew what love waa and what Ita power and vbat Ita force for all that ahe had felt and experienced and dreamed about before were aa nothing to what it waa alnce be bad spoken-she spoken-she could understand whst the strug gle must have been In that woman's heart She could honor ber, reverence rever-ence her, pity fcer. Sue could understand the feeling of the man too; she could thick much more clearly than he. He was distracted dis-tracted by two passions, for his pride and bis boner and for her; she had as yet but one, for him. She could understand how In the first frightful rush of his grief and re-morce re-morce aad love the very fact that d Newbold had been compelled to kill n hla wife, of whom he was beginning to r. grow a little weary under such clrcum-r clrcum-r stances, bad ad-led ttnmeiisuly to his e remorse and quickened his detcrmln-i- atlon to expiate his guilt and cberlah n her memory. She could understand e why he would do Just aa he had done, y go Into the wilderness to be alone In d horror of himself and In horror of hla e fellow men to think only, mlstakeuly, . of her. r Now he was paying the penalty of that Isolation. Men were made to e live with one another, and no one if could violate tlio law natural, or by e so long en Inheritance as to have so g become, without paying that penalty. - Hla Ideas of loyalty and fidelity were a warped, hla conceptions of his duty d were narrow. There was something noble In his determination, It Is a true, but there was something also y very foolish. The dividing line belt be-lt tween w (adorn and folly la some-d some-d times as Indefinite a that between e comedy and tragedy, between laughter and tears. If the woman he had t married and killed had only hated i Mm and he had known It would have e been different, but since he believed 0 so In her love be could do nothing a else. t At that period in her reflections Enid Maltland saw a great light, t The woman had not loved her bus-t bus-t band after all, she had loved anot till ti-ll er. That passion of which he had t dreamed had not been for him. Hy a :, strange chain of circumstance Enid J Maltland held In her hand the solo-r solo-r Hon of the problem. She had but r to give him these letters to show 9 him that bis golden Image bad stood f upon fet of clay, that the love up- 1 on which he had dwelt was not his. 1 Once convinced of that be would come quick to her arms. She crleo r a prayer of blessing on old Klrkby t and started to her feet, the letters v p hand, to call Newbold back to her 9 'aad tell blm, and then she stopped, a Woman as ahe was she had re-w re-w spect for the binding conditions and i laws of honor as, well as he. Chance, i aay Providence, had put the honor t of this woman, her rival, in her i hands. , The world had long since " rnjfiStten this poor unfortunate; In i no heart was her memory cherished i save In that of ber husband. His I Idea of her was a false one to be I sure, but not even to procure her i own happiness could Enid Maltland i overthrow that Ideal, shatter that , memory. She aat down again with the letters let-ters In her hand. It had been very simple a moment since, but It was not so now. She had but to show him those letters to remove the great barrier between them. She could not do It It was clearly Impossible. The reputation of her dead sister who had struggled so bravely to the end waa In ber hands, she could not sacrifice sac-rifice her even for ber own happiness. happi-ness. "Quixotic," you say? I do not think so. She had blundered unwittingly, unwillingly, uon the heart secret of the other woman; she could not betray be-tray It. Even If the other woman had been really unfaithful In deed as well as In thought to her husband Enid could hardly have destroyed his recollection of her. How much more Impossible It was since the other woman wo-man had fought at heroically and ao successfully for her honor. Womanhood Woman-hood demanded her silence. Ixiyal-ty, Ixiyal-ty, honor, compelled her silence. A dead band grasped his heart and the same dead band grarped hers. She could see no way out of the difficulty. dif-ficulty. So far as ahe knew no human hu-man soul except old Klrkby and herself her-self knew this woman's story. She could not tell Newbold snd she would have to Impone upon Klrkby the aame silence as she herself exercised. There was absolutely no way In which the man could f.nd out. He roust cherish his dream aa te aould. She wou'd not tnilght-cn tnilght-cn him. she would cot disabuse his mind, she could not shatter his Ideal, she could not betray his wife. They might love as the ange'a of heaven and yet be kept forever apart by a scruple, an lda, a principle, an ab-strsction. ab-strsction. honor, a name. Her mind told her these things were Idle and foolish, but htr soul would not hear of It. And In spite of her resolutions she fit that even tnally there would b some way. She would not have teen a human wo msn If she bad nut hnj-ed and prsyed that f he believed that God had created cre-ated them for each other, that be had thrown them together. She was enough of a fatalist In this Instance at least to accept their Intimacy as the result of Hla ordination. There must be some way out of the dilemma. dilem-ma. Yet she knew that he would be true to his belief and she felt that she would not be false to her obll-gatlon. obll-gatlon. What of that? There would be some way. Perhaps somebody else knew, and then there flashed Into Ber mind the writer of the let 'e ' She Hsd but te Snow Him Those Letters. me and whom I killed, you saw it once before." "Yes." she nodded, taking It from him carefully and looking again In a strange commixture of pride, resentment re-sentment and pity at the bold, somewhat some-what coarse, entirely uncultured, yet handsome face which gave no evidence evi-dence of the moral purpose which she had displayed. "And here," said the man offering the other article, "Is something that no human eye but mine haa ever seen since that dny, It Is a locket I took from her neck. t'ntll you came I wore It next to my heart." "And since then?" "Since then I have bi-en unworthy hT aa I am unworthy you. and I have put It aside." "I a it contain another picture?": Yes." ! "Of her?" j "A man's face." "Yours?" He shook his head. "look and see." he answered. "Press the spring" Suiting action to word, the next j second Enid Maltland found herself gazing upon the pictured semblance of Mr. James Armstrong! "he. ws utterly unable to suppress an etrls-matlon etrls-matlon snd a start of surprise at t!-e astonishing revelation. The man looked at her curiously; he opened his mouth to question her but she recovered htrif In part at least and swiftly Interrupted him In a panic of terror lest she should betray her knowledge. "And what Is the picture of another anoth-er msn doing In your wife's locket?" she asked to gain time, for she very well knew the reply; knew It, Indeed, In-deed, better than Newbold himself? Who ss It happened, was equally In the dark both as to the mag and the reason. "1 don't know," answered the other. oth-er. "Io you know this man?" "1 never saw him In my life that I can recall." "And have you did you" "Did I auspect my wlfr he asked. "Never. I had too many evidences that ate loved ci and me alone for a Its purposes. Enid had coma fro i tbe Atlantic seaboard to be th second sec-ond woman that both these two men loved! If she ever saw Mr. James Armstrong Arm-strong again, and she bsd no doubt that she would, she would have som strange things to say to him. She held la her bands now all the thread of the mystery, she was master of all the solutions, and each thread was a chain that bound her. "My friend," she said at last with a deep sigh, "you must forget tbfs night and go on as before. You lore me, thank God for that, but honor and respect Interpose between na. ' And I love you, and I thank God for that, too, but for me aa wei! , fat-same fat-same barrier rises. Whether we shall ever surmount these barrier God alone knows He brought together, he put that love in oor hearts, we will have to leave ft to him to do as m will with ns both. Meanwhile we must go on aa lie-fore" lie-fore" "No," cried the man, "yon Impose upon me tasks beyond my strength; you don't know what love la. you don't know the heart hunger, the awful aw-ful madness I feel. Think, I bavafbevn alone with a recollection for all thee-years, thee-years, a man In the dark. In the ntgfet; and the light comes, you are a ere. The first night I brought you here 1 walked that room on the other aide of that narrow door like a lion peat Bp In bars of steel. I bsd only my ova love, my own passionate adoratiou to move me then, but now that I kaww you lov me. that I see it In your eye, that I hear It from your lips, that 1 mark It In the beat of your heart, can I keep silent? Can I live on and oT Can 1 ce you, touch you. breath Xhm same air with you. be pent op In tft same room with you hour after kwar. day after day. aad go on as before? T csn't do It, It is an impossibility. What keeps me now from taking rots in my arms aad from kissing th cetor Into your cheeks, from making yomt lips nay own, from drinking tn light from, your eye? H swayed sear to her, hla vole rose. "What restrain mef he demanded. (Tf BE CONTINUED tared at her a little spsee. "There is only on wsy of satisfaction In it all, on gleam of comfort," be added. "And what Is that?" "You don't know what th suffering is. you don't understand, you don't comprehend." "And why not?" -Because you do not lov me" "But 1 do." ssld th woman quit Imply as if It wer a mattr of course not only that she should lov aim. but that so should also tell blm ao. Th man stared at ar amased. "And you won't break it" I never broke It to a human being, much leaa will I do so to you!" Sb released him, he went Into th other room and sii heard blm cross th floor and open the door and go out into th night. Into th storm again. CHAPTER XVII. Th . In tht Lecket. Left aloe la th room sb sat down sgain' before th Or and drew from ar pocket the packet ot lsitara. fcb |