They were both silent for a moment.

"Let us change this disgusting subject, Frank,” she said at length. "I wish you to leave with something kindlier to remember in my face than this shadow. You see, I have taken your pictures all down and locked them up. I have placed your clothes, all I could spare, in your trunk-for even these little things to me are heart treasures now. I could not let you take the slippers I have made for you with my own hands, or your dressing-gowns. That woman shall never touch them. The marriage certificate, with the little poem written to me on the birth of Lucy, I've packed up, too, with your pictures. I've put them away, because, just now, it would break my heart to look at them after this parting with you. When I come back from the South I will be stronger, and I will bring them out again. Your ring is mine until God's hand shall take it. I'll teach our babies always to love you."

Her voice broke, and he looked away.

"I will tell them that you have gone on a long journey into a strange country, and that you will come back again because you love them."

He stirred uneasily in his chair, crossed his legs and frowned.

"And I wish you to leave me to-day with the certainty-you can read it in my eyes, if you doubt my lips that I will love you to the end, though you kill me. You can go on no journey so long, in no world so strange, that I shall not follow. My

"

soul will envelop you. For better, for worse, through evil report and good report, I am yours." Again a convulsive sob shook her, and she was silent.

Gordon felt an almost resistless impulse to take her in his arms and kiss and soothe her. Through her tears she smiled at him. "How beautiful you are, my dear! You will not forget that I love you? The spring, the summer, the autumn, the winter will only bring to me messages from our past. The way will be lonely, but the memory of the touch of your hand, our hours of perfect peace and trustfulness, the sweetness of your kisses on my lips, the living pictures of your face in our children, I will cherish."

He stooped to kiss her as he left, but she drew back trembling.

"No, Frank, not while your lips are warm with the touch of another and your flesh on fire with desire for her. It will be sweet to remember that you wished it-for I know, what you do not, that deep down in your soul of souls you love me. I I will abide God's time."

He left her with a smile playing around her sensitive mouth and lighting the shadows of her great dark eyes.

CHAPTER XVII

THE THOUGHT THAT SWEEPS THE CENTURY

On the Saturday following Gordon's drama with Kate and his wife his dream of secrecy was rudely shattered. Van Meter's ferret eyes, by the aid of his detectives, had fathomed the mystery of Kate Ransom's appearance in the study and her more mysterious disappearance.

They found that Gordon had separated from his wife, after a terrific scene; that he was a daily visitor to the Ransom house; and that his great patron was none other than the young mistress of the Gramercy Park mansion.

All day long he was beseiged by reporters. Ruth was compelled to hire a man to stand on the doorstep to keep them out. The Ransom house was barred, but Gordon could not escape.

He saw at once that they knew so much it was useless to make denials, and he prepared a statement for the press, giving the facts and his plans for the future in a ringing address. He submitted it to Kate for her approval, and at three o'clock gave it out for publication.

Their love secret had not been fathomed, but it had been guessed. He feared the reports would be

so written that it would be read between the lines and a great deal more implied.

His revolutionary views on marriage and divorce and the fact that he was from Indiana, a state that had granted the year before nearly five thousand divorces, one for every five marriages celebrated, were made the subject of special treatment by one paper. They submitted to him proofs of a sixcolumn article on the subject, and asked for his comments. He was compelled to either deny or repeat his utterances advocating freedom of divorce, and finally was badgered into admitting that this feature was one of the fundamental tenets of Socialism.

He was not ready for the full pubic avowal of this principle, but he was driven to the wall and was forced to own it or lie. He boldly gave his position, and declared that marriage was a fetish, and that its basis on a union for life without regard to the feelings of the parties was a fountain of corruption, and was the source of the monopolistic instincts that now cursed the human race.

"Yes, and you can say," he cried, "that I propose to lead a crusade for the emancipation of women from the degradation of its slavery. Love bound by chains is not love. Love can only be a reality in Freedom and Fellowship."

This single sentence had changed the colouring of the whole story as it appeared in the press on

Sunday morning, and was the key to the tremendous sensation it produced.

The next day long before the hour of service the street in front of the Pilgrim Church was packed with a dense crowd.

The police could scarcely clear the way for the members' entrance. Within ten minutes from the time the large doors were opened every seat was filled and hundreds stood on the pavements outside, waiting developments, unable to gain admission.

So many statements had been made, and so many vicious insinuations hinted, Gordon was compelled to lay aside his sermon and devote the entire hour to a defense of his position.

The crowd listened in breathless stillness, but he knew from the first he had lost their sympathies and that he was on trial. Unable to tell the whole truth, his address was as lame and ineffective as his outburst the Sunday before had been resistless. When he dismissed the crowd he noticed that some of his warmest friends were crying.

As he came down from the pulpit, Ludlow took him by the hand and, with trembling voice, said: "Pastor, you know how I love you?"

What he did not say was more eloquent than a thousand words, and it cut Gordon to his inmost soul. He knew his failure had been pathetic, and that his enemies were laughing over the certainty of his ruin.

It angered him for a moment as he looked over