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14
SYNOPSIS.
Enid Maitland, a frank, free and un
spoiled young Phailadelphla girl. Is te*®”
to the Colorado mountains by ner uncle,
Robert Maitland. James Armstrong,
Maitland’s protege, falls in love with her
His persistent wooing thrills the girl, but
she hesitates, and Armstrong goes east
on business without a definite an ®w® •
EnW hears the story mining engi
neer, Newbold, whose wife fell oft a cliff
and was so seriously hurt that he was
compelled to shoot her to Prevent her be
ing eaten by wolves while he went for
help. Kirkby, the old guide who tells the
story, gives Enid a package of letters
which he savs were found on the dead
woman's body. She reads the letters and
at Kirkby's request keeps them while
bathing in mountain stream Enid is at
tacked by a bear, which is "J'^tlou.
shot. A storm adds to the girlls tcrror.
A sudden deluge transforms brook nto
raging torrent, which sw eeps Enid Into
corsre, where she is rescued a *p cu
tain hermit after a thrilling ‘‘’iperience.
Campers in great confusion upon discov
ing Enid's absence when the storm
breaks. Maitland and Old Kirkby go in
search of the girl. Enid discovers that
her ankle Is .sprained and that she is un
able to walk Her mysterious rescuer
carries her to his camp. /° e '
Bleep in the strange man s bunk. Miner
cooks breakfast for Enid, after which
they go on tour of inspection. The “er
mit tells Enid of his unsuccessful attempt
to find the Maitland campers He admits
that he is also from Philadelphia. Tin
hermit falls in love with Enid. The man
comes to a realization of his love for_her
but naturally in that strange solitude the
relations of the girl and her rescuerbe
come unnatural and strained. The. '’trac
er tells of a wife he had who is dead,
and says he has sworn to ever cherish
her memory by living In solitude He and
Enid, however, confess their love for
each other. She learns that he is the
man who killed his wife in the mountain.
CHAPTER XVl—(Continued).
“Oh, God! Oh, God!” he cried in
his humiliation and shame, “if I had
only met you first, or if my wife had
died as others die, and not by my
hand in that awful hour. I can see
her now, broken, bruised, bleeding,
torn. I can hear the report of that
weapon; her last glance at me in the
midst of her indescribable agony was
one of thankfulness and gratitude. I
can’t stand it, I am unworthy even of
her.”
“But you could not help it, it was
not your fault. And you can’t help—
caring—for me —”
“I 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 had no right, that I was pledged
like a monk to the past. I have been
weak, a fool. I love you and my hon
or goes, I love you and my self-respect
goes, I love you and my pride goes.
Would to God I could say I love you
and my life goes and end it all.” He
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She Had but to Show Him Those Letters.
stared at her a little space. “There
is only one way of satisfaction in it
all, one gleam of comfort,” he added,
“And what is that?”
“You don’t know what the suffering
is, you don’t understand, you don’t
comprehend.”
“And why not?”
“Because you do not love me.”
"But I do,” said the woman quite
simply as if it were a matter of
course not only that she should love
him, but that she should also tell him
80.
The man stared at her amazed.
Such fierce surges of joy throbbed
through him as he had not thought
the human frame could sustain. This
woman loved him, in some strange
way he had gained her affection. It
was impossible, yet she had said so!
He had been a blind fool. He could
see that now. She stood before him
and smiled up at him, looking at him
through eyes misted with tears, with
lips' parted, with color coming and go
ing in her cheek and with her bosom
rising and falling. She loved him, he
had but to step 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 hell, was that he could
not cross.
“I never dreamed, I never hoped—
oh,” he exclaimed as if he got his
death wound, "this cannot be borne.”
He turned away but in two swift
steps she caught him.
"Where do you go?”
“Out, out into the night.”
“You cannot go now, it is dark;
hark to the storm, you would miss
your footing you would fail, you would
freeze, you would die.”
"What matters that?”
"I cannot have it.”
“It would be better so.”
He strove again to wrench himself
away, but she would not be denied.
She 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.”
“I tell you that the quicker and
more surely I go out of life, the 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 him with one hand and laid
it upon her heart. “You are here.”
"Enid,” cried the man.
"No,” she thrust him gently away
with one hand yet detained him with
the other —that was emblematic of
the situation between them. “Not
now, not yet, let me think, but prom
ise me you will do yourself no harm,
you will let notfiing imperil your life.”
“As you will,” said the man regret
fully. “I had purposed to end it now
and forever, but I promise.”
“Your word of honor?”
“My word of honor.”
“And you won't break it.”
"I never broke it to a human being,
much less will I do so to you!”
She released him, he went into the
other room and she heard him cross
the floor and open the door and go
out into the night, into the storm
again.
CHAPTER XVII.
The Face in the Locket.
Left alone in the room she sat down
again before the fire and drew from
her pocket the packet of letters. She
knew them by heart, she had read and
reread them often when she had been
alone. ' They had fascinated her.
They were letters from some other
man to this man’s wife. They were
signed by an initial only and the iden
tity of the writer was quite unknown
to her. The woman’s replies were
not with the others, but it was easy
enough to see what those replies had
been. All the passion of which rhe
woman had been capable had evi
dently been bestowed upon the writer
of the letters she had treasured.
Her story was quite plain. She
had married Newbold in a fit of
pique. He was an eastern man, the
best educated, the most fascinating
and interesting of the men who fre
quented the camp. There had been a
quarrel between the letter writer and
the woman; there were always quar
rels, apparently, but this had been, a
serious one and the man had savagely
flung away and left her. He had not
come back as he usually did. She had
waited for him and then he had come
back —too late!
He had wanted to kill the other, but
she had prevented, and while Newbold
was away he had made desperate love
to her. He had besought her to
leave her husband to go away with
him. He had used every argument
that he could to that end and the wo
man had hesitated and wavered, but
she had not consented; she had not
denied her love for him any more than
she had denied her .respect and a
certain admiration for her gallant,
trusting husband. She had refused
again and again the requests of her
lover. She could not control her
heart, nevertheless she had kept to
her marriage vows. But the force of
her resistance had grown weaker and
she had realized that alone she would
perhaps inevitably succumb.
Her lover had been away when her
husband returned prior to the . last
fateful journey. Enid Maitland saw
now why she had besought him to
take her with him, she was afraid to
be left alone! She did not dare de
pend upon her own powers any more; I
her only salvation was to go with this
man whom she did not love, whom at
times she almost hated, to keep from
falling into the arms of the man she
did love. She had been more or less
afraid of Newbold. She had soon
realized, because she was not blinded
by any passion as he, that they had
been utterly mismated. She had come
to understand that when the same
knowledge of the truth came to him,
as it inevitably must some day, noth
ing but unhappiness would be their
portion.
Every kind of an argument in ad
dition to those so passionately ad
duced in these letters urging her to
break away from her husband and to
seek happiness for herself while yet
there was time, besieged her heart,
seconded her lover’s plea and assailed
her will, and yet she had not given
way.
Now Enid Maitland hated the 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 came between her and that man.
She hated her because Newbold was
still true-to her memory, because
Newbold, believing in the greatness of
her passion 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 stern sense of jus
tice in the bosom of this young wo
man. She exulted in the successful
battle the poor woman had made for
the preservation 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 easiest way and the desper
ation with which she had clung to
him she did not love, but to whom
she was bound by the laws of God and
man, in order that she might not fall
into the arms of the man she did love,
in defiance of right.
Enid Maitland and this woman were
as far removed from each other
as the opposite poles of *’'e 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 expected; un
natural, perhaps, and to be unexpect
ed in the other, but there! Now that
she knew what love was and what
its power and what its force —for all
that she had felt and experienced and
dreamed about before were as nothing
to what it was since he had spoken—
she could understand what the strug
gle must have been in that woman’s
heart She could honor her, rever
ence her, pity her.
Sue could understand the feeling of
the man too; she could think much
more clearly than he. He was dis
tracted by two passions, for his pride
and his honor and for her; she had as
yet but one, for him.
She could understand how in the
first frightful rush of his grief anti re
morzs and love the very fact that
Newbold had been compelled to kill
his wife, of whom he was beginning to
grow a little weary under such circum
stances, had added immensely to his
remorse and quickened his determin
ation to expiate his guilt and cherish
her memory. She could understand
why he would do just as he had done,
go into the wilderness to be alone in
horror of himself and in horror of his
fellow men to think only, mistakenly,
of her.
Now he was paying the penalty of
that isolation. Men were made to
live with one another, and no one
could violate the law natural, or by
so long an inheritance as to have so
become, without paying that’penalty.
His ideas of loyalty and fidelity were
warped, his conceptions of his duty
were narrow. There was something
noble in his determination, it is
true, but there was something also
very foolish. The dividing line be
tween wisdom and folly is some
times as indefinite as that between
comedy and tragedy, between laughter
and tears. If the woman he had
married and killed had only hated
him and he had known it would have
been different, but since he believed
so in her love he could do nothing
else.
At that period in her reflections
Enid Maitland saw a* great light.
The woman had not loved her hus
band after all, she had loved anoth
er. That passion of which he had
dreamed had not been for him. By a
strange chain of circumstances Enid
Maitland held in her hand the solu
tion of the problem. She had but
to give him these letters to show
him that his golden image had stood
upon feet of clay, that the love up
on which he had dwelt was not his.
Once convinced of that he would
come quick to her arms. She crlec
a prayer of blessing on old Kirkby
and started to her feet, the letters
in hand, to call Newbold back to her
and tell him, and then she stopped.
Woman as she was she had re
spect for the binding conditions and
| laws of honor as well as he. Chance,
nay Providence, had put the honor
of this woman, her rival, in her
hands. The world had long since
forgotten this poor unfortunate; in
no heart was her memory cherished
save in that of her husband. His
idea of her was a false one to be
sure, but not even to procure her
own happiness could Enid Maitland
overthrow that ideal, shatter that
memory.
She sat down again with the 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
was in her hands, she could not sac
rifice her even for her own happi
ness.
“Quixotic,” you say? Ido not think
so. She had blundered unwittingly,
unwillingly, upon the heart secret of ’
the other woman; she could not 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 wo
man had fought, sc heroically and so
successfully for her honor. Woman
hood demanded her silence. Loyal
ty, honor, compelled her silence.
A dead hand grasped his heart and
the same dead hand grasped hers.
She could see no way out of the dif
ficulty. So far as she knew no hu
man soul except old Kirkby and her
self knew this woman’s story. She
could not tell Newbold and she
would have to Impose upon Kirkby
the same silence as she herself
exercised. There was absolutely
no way in which the man could
find out. He must cherish his dream
as he would. She would not enlight
en him, she would not disabuse his
mind, she could not shatter his ideal,
she could not betray his wife. They
might love as the angels of heaven
and yet be kept forever apart—by
a scruple, an idea, a principle, an ab
straction, honor, a name.
Her mind told her these things
were idle and foolish, but her soul
would not hear of it. And in spite of
her resolutions she felt that even
tually there would be some way. She
would not have been a human wo
man if she had not hoped arid prayed
that. She believed that God had cre
ated them for each other, that he
had thrown them together. She was
enough of a fatalist in this instance
at least to accept their intimacy as
the result of His ordination'. There
must be some way out of the dilem
ma.
Yet she knew that he would be
true to his belief and she felt that
she would not be false to her obli
gation. What of that? There would
be some way. Perhaps somebody
else knew, and then there flashed
j into her mind the writer of th* let-;
ters. Who was he? Was he yet
alive? Had he any part to play in
this strange tragedy aside from that
he had already assayed?
Sometimes an answer to a secret
query is made openly. At this junc
ture Newbold came back. He
stopped before her unsteadily, his face
now marked not only by the fierce- :
ness of the storm outside, but by
the fiercer grapple of the storm in
his heart.
"You havri a right,” he began, “to
.know everything now. I can with
hold nothing from you.” ;
He had in his hand a picture and i
something yellow that gleamed in i
the light. "There,” he continued ex
tending them toward her, “is the pic
ture of the poor woman /who loved
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Shri Was Utterly Unable to Suppress an Exclamation.
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, re
sentment and pity at the bold, some
what coarse, entirely uncultured, yet
handsome face which gave no 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 has ever
seen since that day. It is a locket
I took from her neck. Until you
came I wore it next to my heart.”
"And since then?”
“Since then I have been unworthy
her as I am unworthy you, and I
have put it aside.”
"Does it contain another picture?”
“Yes.”
"Os her?”
“A man’s face.”
“Yours?”
He shook his head.
“Look and see,” he answered.
"Press the spring.”
Suiting action to word, the next
second Enid Maitland found herself
gazing upon the pictured semblance
of Mr. James Armstrong! She was
utterly unable to suppress an excla
mation and a start of surprise at the
astonishing revelation. The man
looked at her curiously f he opened
his mouth to question her but she
recovered herself 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 anoth
er man doing in your wife’s locket?”
she asked to gain time, for she very
well knew the reply; knew it, in
deed, better than Newbold himself!
Who as it happened, was equally in
the dark both as to the man and the
reason.
"I don’t know,” answered the oth
er.
“Do you know this man?”
“I never saw him in my life) that
I can recall.”
"And have you—did you—”
“Did I suspect my wife?” he asked.
"Never. I h;«4 too many evidences
I that she loved me and me alone for a
ghost of suspicion to enter my mind.
It may have been a brother, or hei
father in his youth.”
’“And why did you wear it?”
“Because I took it from her dead
heart. Some day I shall find out who
the man is and when I shall I know
there will be nothing to her discredit
in the knowledge.”
Enid Maitland nodded her head.
She closed the locket, laid it on the
table and pushed it away from her.
So this was the man the woman had
loved, who had begged her to go
away with him, this handsome Arm
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
its purposes. Enid had come from
the Atlantic seaboard to be the sec
ond woman that both these two men
loved!
If she ever saw Mr. James Arm
strong again, and she had no doubt
that she would, she would have some
strange things to say to him. She -
held in her hands now all the threads
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 this
night and go on as before. You love
me, thank God for that, but honor
and respect interpose between us.
And I love you, and I thank God for
that, too, but for me as well the
same barrier rises. Whether we
shall ever surmount these barriers
God alone knows. He brought us
together, he put that love in our
hearts, we will have to leave it to
him to do as he will with us both.
Meanwhile we must go on as be
fore.”
"No,” cried the man, "you impose
upon me tasks beyond my strength;
you don't know what love is, you
don't know the heart hunger, the aw
ful madness I feel. Think, I have beer
alone with a recollection for all these
years, a man in the dark," in the night;
and the light comes, you are here
The first night I brought you here K
walked that room on the other side o’
that narrow door like a lion pent uj/
in bars of steel. I had only my own
love, my own passionate adoration to
move me then, but how that I knot/
you love me, that I see it in your eyer,
that I hear it from your lips, that
mark it in the beat of your heart, can
I keep silent? Can I live on and on?
Can I see you, touch you, breathe the
same air with you, be pent up in th/,
' same room with you hour after hour,
day after day, and go on as before? I
can’t do it, it is an impossibility.
What keeps me now from taking you
in my arms and from kissing the color
into your cheeks, from making your
lips my own, from drinking the light
from your eyes?” He swayed near to
her. bis voice rose. "What restrains
1 me?” he demanded.
H (TO BB CONTINUED.)