infinite yearning in her eyes, gave a faint cry, half anguish, half despair, and threw herself into his arms, holding him with passionate violence while she smothered his lips and eyes with kisses.

He attempted gently to draw her arms from his neck.

"No, you shall not," she cried, holding him convulsively. "I will not let you go. You are my husband-my own, my love, the hero of my girl's dreams, the father of my babies. I have no pride. I will do anything for you if you will only love me."

"But, Ruth, if I have ceased to love you

"Don't, don't say it!" she shrieked, placing her hand on his lips. "I will not hear it. You do love me. This woman has lured you with her devil's beauty, and thrown her spell over your baser nature. Ah, Frank, dear, tell me that you love me! Lie to me as meaner men lie to their women. Such a lie I'll hold an honour before the awful shame of desertion. You cannot humiliate me so. See, dear, I am at your feet. Have mercy

on me. Do not ask me to bear more than I can endure. Am I not the mother of your children?"

Gordon frowned and withdrew her arms from his neck.

"All this is very painful, Ruth. You cannot mean it. You know I have tried to be honest. I hate a lie. I could not tell one if I tried. You cannot love me and ask this infamy. I could never

lift up my head again as a leader and teacher of men and know I was a wilful liar."

The little figure shivered.

"But, Frank, I can't give you up. It was the touch of your hand, the music of your voice that first awoke my woman's soul. You are my mate. You cannot know the young mother-wonder, pain and joy that thrilled my heart as I first bent over Lucy's face, your dear eyes in hers smiling at me. Our very flesh became one in Nature's miracle of love."

"And yet our lives have somehow drifted apart, Ruth."

"But not so far, dear, as this woman has made you believe," she answered tenderly. "I have been selfish and resentful, but I will make it all up. I will lift up my head and be cheerful-live for you, work for you, think only of you, ask nothing for myself but only your presence and your love.” "But if I have given it to anotherAgain she put her hand on his lips. "But you have not. It is madness. not forget our life. Last night I lay alone in silence, with wide-open eyes, dreaming it all over again. This woman I know is more beautiful than I-three years younger; her hair is gold, mine the raven's. She is fair and full and tall, and I am dark and small; but, Frank, dear, love is more than eyes and hair and lips and form. We have been made one in our flesh and blood and inmost soul. There is

You could

There is no music

no other man than you for me.

save your voice."

"Yet, if you feel this for me, and I thus wait in love on another, how can I live the lie?"

"Can you forget the

she pleaded wistfully.

sunlit days of our past?" "When you lay on the sands of the beach in old Virginia and held my hand while I read to you, idly dreaming through that wonderful summer before our first-born came sailing into port from God's blue sea! You said I was beautiful then. And you were so tender and gracious in your strength. No other woman can ever be to you this first girl-mother."

Her voice melted into a sob. She tried to go on and bit her swollen lips.

Then she rose quietly, and walked to the window and looked down at the city below, whose roar had drowned the music of her life.

He sat silent, waiting for her to regain her strength. He knew that he had the power of hypnotic suggestion over her in his iron will, and that she was beginning to recognise the inevitable.

She turned and faced him again, the hungry fires in her eyes burning with mystic radiance. A tiny stream of blood ran down from her lip and stood in the dimple of her chin. She drew a delicate lace handkerchief from her bosom and wiped the blood away until it ceased to flow. And then in low accents she said:

"You are going to leave me, my love. I feel

the cold chill on my heart. It is God's will; I bow to it. One look into your dear eyes, one last embrace, one farewell kiss, and you will be gone. A little gift I will make you in this, the saddest, lowliest hour my soul has ever known. This handkerchief, stained with blood from lips you have kissed so tenderly in the past-that bled to-day because I tried to keep back the cries of a broken heart-I ask that you keep this as a token of my love."

She handed it to him and Gordon placed it in his pocket with a sigh, brushing a tear from his own eyes.

CHAPTER XIV

THE VOICE OF THE SIREN

GORDON left the house with a lingering look at Ruth's window and turned his face toward Gramercy Park, where another woman was waiting for his footstep.

He had suffered intensely in the scene with his wife. He did not believe it possible that she retained such power over him. He drew a deep breath of relief that it was over. Her pride would come to the rescue; for he knew that with her tenderness she combined strength, and with her delicacy, supreme energy.

The exaltation of his great victory of yesterday welled within him and drowned the sense of pain. It had been the most momentous day of his life. Visions of his Temple with gorgeous dome of gold rising in the sky from its pile of gleaming marble rose before his fancy. He could hear the peal of the grand organ, the swell of the chorus choir, and the response from five thousand eager faces before him. He was speaking with inspiration as never before. He was leading not a forlorn hope against overwhelming odds, but a triumphant host of free, godlike men and women to certain victory.