vice behind locked doors.  Locks themselves are the best witness against evil.  She attended the Dutch Reformed Church regularly.  She was present at all the church suppers, and everybody has called on her in Westover.  Now I think she has fled, half-crazed with grief over the death of her lover, and afraid of some sort of exposure.  Unless I miss my guess, there will be a furor around here shortly over her disappearance.  She was not a bad woman as I remember her, and she was attractive, with a kindly disposition.  But he had his way always with women, and I suppose she thought she was doing him a service by kidnapping poor little Clemency.  I am sorry for her.  I hope she did not go away penniless, but she has her nursing to fall back upon.  She was a good nurse.  That makes me think.  I must see if Mrs. Blair cannot come here to-morrow.  Clara must have somebody beside Clemency and Emma.  I should prefer a trained nurse, and this woman is simply the self-taught village sort, but Clara prefers her.  She shrinks at the very mention of a trained nurse.  Of course, it is unreasonable, but the poor soul has always had an awful dread of hospitals and a possible operation, and I believe that in some way she thinks a trained nurse one of a dreadful trinity.  She must be humored, of course.  The result cannot be changed.”

“You have no hope, then?” James said in a low voice.

“I have had no more from the outset than if she had been already dead,” said Gordon.

James said nothing.  An enormous pity for the other man was within him.  He thought of Clemency, and he seemed to undergo the same pangs.  He felt such a terrible understanding of the other’s suffering that it passed the bounds of sympathy.  It became almost experience.  His young face took on the same expression of dull misery as Gordon’s.  Presently Gordon glanced at him, and spoke with a ring of gratitude and affection in his tired voice.

“You are a good fellow, Elliot,” he said, “and you are the one ray of comfort I have.  I am glad that I have you to leave poor little Clemency with.”

James looked at him with sudden alarm.  “You are not ill?” he said.

“No, but there is an end to everybody’s rope, and sometimes I think I am about at the end of mine.  I don’t know.  Anyway, it is a comfort to me to think that Clemency has you in case anything should happen to me.”

“She has me as long as I live,” James said fervently.  Red overspread his young face, his eyes glistened.  Again the great pity and understanding with regard to the other man came over him, and a feeling for Clemency which he had never before had:  a feeling greater than love itself, the very angel of love, divinest pity and protection, for all womanhood, which was exemplified for himself in this one girl.  His heart ached, as if it were Clemency’s upstairs, lying miserably asleep under the influence of the drug, which alone could protect her from indescribable pain.  His mind projected itself into the future, and realized the possibility of such suffering for her, and for himself.  The honey-sting of pain, which love has, stung him sharply.