gentleman, thought you loved me, a vulgar, uneducated, savage girl,
and that I, kinder to you than you to me or him, made you take it
back across that tide, because I couldn't let you link your life
with me, and drag you in the mire."

"You need not have said that, Miss Culpepper, returned Calvert with
the same gentle smile, "to prove that I am your inferior in all but
one thing."

"And that?" she said quickly.

"Is my love."

His gentle face was as set now as her own as he moved back slowly
towards the door. There he paused.

"You tell me to speak of Jim, and Jim only. Then hear me. I
believe that Miss Preston cares for him as far as lies in her young
and giddy nature. I could not, therefore, have crushed HIS hope
without deceiving him, for there are as cruel deceits prompted by
what we call reason as by our love. If you think that a knowledge
of this plain truth would help to save him, I beg you to be kinder
to him than you have been to me,--or even, let me dare to hope, to
YOURSELF."

He slowly crossed the threshold, still holding his cap lightly in
his hand.

"When I tell you that I am going away to-morrow on a leave of
absence, and that in all probability we may not meet again, you