THE LOVE OF A MAN For a moment the girl hesitated, her ungloved hands clenched on her breast, her bloodless face tense with a strange grief, as she saw the outstretched arms of the man whom her treachery had almost lured to his death.

Then, slowly, she approached, and once more Howland held her hands clasped to him and gazed questioningly down into the wild eyes that stared into his own.
"Why did you run away from me ?" were the first words that he spoke.

They came from him gently, as if he had known her for a long time.

In them there was no tone of bitterness; in the warmth of his gray eyes there was none of the denunciation which she might have expected.

He repeated the question, bending his head until he felt the soft touch of her hair on his lips.