me in which to make a man of myself."

As he finished speaking he saw, for the first time, that Lucy was
crying. He sprang forward, but she shrank away. "No, no, don't touch
me! I'm so terribly disappointed, and hurt, and--stunned."

"But you surely don't love me the less for having conquered these
things in the past?"

"I don't know, I don't know," she said, with a sob. "I honored and
idealized you, Robert I can never think of you as being other than
you are now."

"But why should you?" he pleaded. "It was only one year out of my
life; too much, it's true, but I have atoned for it with all my
might."

The intensity and earnestness of his voice were beginning to
influence her. She was very young, with the stern, uncompromising
standards of girlhood; life was black or white to her, and time had
not yet filled in the canvas with the myriad grays that blend into
one another until all lines are effaced, and only the Master Artist
knows the boundaries.

She looked up through her tears. "I'll try to forgive you," she
said, tremulously; "but you must promise to give up your friendship
for Dick Harris."

Redding frowned and bit his lip. "That's not fair!" he said. "You
know Dick's my chum; that he hasn't the least influence over me;