"Of--of the very strangest of things," he stammered.

"But not of the letter? I am so sorry I bored you with----"

"Stop! Please, stop! Pardon me, I--I--for G.o.d's sake, let me think!"

he burst out, starting to his feet. He strode to the window and, with his back to her, looked out into the night. The action, sudden and inexplicable, brought flashes of red and white to her face, and then a steady glow--the flush not of indignation, but of joy. A heart throb sent the blood tingling through her veins and a smile flew to her startled face. Her eyes melted with a sweet, tender joy and her whole being was suffused with the radiance of understanding. Woman's intuition told her all, and, with clasped hands, she looked upon the motionless figure. One hand went out toward him as if to lead him into the light of her love. He loved her!

She went to the piano and gently, with a soft smile on her lips, began to play "La Paloma," the daintiest of waltzes, for her heart was dancing. At last he turned slowly and looked upon the player. Her back was toward him. His eyes took in the picture--the white shoulders and neck, the pretty head, the dark hair and the red rose. All his good resolutions, all his remorse, all his honor fled with the first glance. The dullness left his eyes and in its stead came the flaring spark of pa.s.sion. He strode impulsively to her side and when she glanced up in confusion, her eyes found the refuge they had sought--the awakened love in his.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HIS EYES TOOK IN THE PICTURE."]

"O, Jud!" she murmured, faint and happy.

"Celeste!" he whispered, hoa.r.s.ely, his face almost in her hair. "I worship you! I adore you!"

He crushed her in his arms and she smiled through her tears.

CHAPTER XVII.

AT SEA.

Even at that moment he thought of the wrong he was doing Justine, forgetting that he was blasting the life of the other one. And again, when he asked Celeste to be his wife, he thought of the cruel deception he was practicing upon Justine. Not till afterwards did he fully realize that he had deceived Celeste a thousand fold more grossly than Justine--for Justine was his lawful wife, Celeste his victim.

And yet that night he gained her promise to be his wife, calmly, remorselessly leading her to the sacrifice of love. It was enough for the moment that he loved her and that she loved him. As he hurried homeward with her kisses tingling on his lips, he whispered joyously to himself that he loved them both and that he could live for them both--worshiping one no more than the other. And he slept that night with a smile of happiness on his lips.

The day for the wedding was set, and it was not until then that his eyes were opened to the wrong he was doing Celeste. She could not be his wife. All the marriage vows in the land could not bind her to him in law. For the first time he realized that reality. But to his rescue came the a.s.surance that he loved her and that she was his in the holy sight of G.o.d, if not in the wretched laws of man. He saw the wrong of it all, but he made his own law and he made his wrong a right.

As he made his arrangements for the marriage he was afraid that something like conscience might overthrow him before his desires could be realized.

Blissfully ignorant and deeply in love, she filled him with joy by naming a day just one month from that on which he told her that he loved her. Acceding again to his wishes, for his eager will, urged on by fear, carried her with it, she agreed to a very quiet wedding.

The power of his love--the love which shrank and trembled with the fear that it might be thwarted--carried everything before it, sweeping honor and dishonor into a heap which he called the mountain of happiness, and he resolved that it should be strong and enduring.

A week before the wedding day he went to Justine, utterly conscienceless, glorying in his love for her, rejoicing in his capacity to share it with another. Happy were the day and night he spent with her. She gave him the fullness of a love long restrained, long pent-up. She had not seen him in more than three months. All the unhappiness, all the joylessness, all the lonesomeness were swept away by the return of this handsome boy, her husband, her Jud.

It must be confessed that she felt some uneasiness lest he meet 'Gene Crawley on the place and lest the long averted catastrophe might occur.

She felt guilty in that she was deceiving Jud in regard to 'Gene. That was her greatest sin! But Crawley went to the village on that day. He had seen Jud enter the gate the evening before while he was doing the work about the barn, and had slunk back to his lodging place in Martin Grimes' barn. An ugly hatred came into the soul Justine had tempered until it was gentler than one could have supposed 'Gene Crawley's soul could be. The little farm looked fairly prosperous. Jud did not know that the season had turned unproductive and that Justine had been forced to observe the utmost frugality in order to make both ends meet.

And so he basked in her love and then went away, loving her more deeply than ever. He told her of his hopes and his desires and of his struggles to go ahead. Some time, he was sure, he could take her to the city and they could be happy forever.

"Poor Jud," she said, with tears in her eyes. "You are so lonesome, so unhappy! I wish I could be with you. But we are so awfully, awfully poor, aren't we?"

"Cruelly poor, dear, is better. You haven't had a new dress in a year, and look at these clothes of mine."

He was wearing once more the wretched garments in which he was married!

Down at the tollgate Jim Hardesty said to the crowd the day after his departure for Chicago:

"He's made a fizzle uv it, boys. Gol-dinged, ef I c'n make it out.

'Peared as though he wuz bound to make it go up yander an' I'd 'a' bet my last chaw tebaccer 'at he'd 'a' got to be president er somethin' two year' ago. But he's fell down somehow. I never did see sitch a wreck as him. He don't look 's if he had money 'nough to git a good squar'

meal. No wonder he ain't been to see her. It's too dern' fer to walk."

A week afterwards Justine received a letter from Jud. With pale face and crushed heart she read and re-read it. It brought grief and joy, terror and gladness, distress and pride. In her solitude she wept piteously, but whether with joy or sadness she could not have told.

"And now I must tell you of the great good luck that has befallen me.

It means that poor Jud Sherrod is to have the greatest opportunity that ever came to a man. I am going to Europe, across the ocean, dearest.

Can you imagine such a thing? Think of me going to Europe, think of me sailing across the sea. I'll believe it when I find that I am not really dreaming. Truly, it is too wonderful to be true. How I wish I could take you with me. But think of the wonderful things I'll have to tell you when I come back. I can tell you of Paris, London, Rome and all the places we have talked and read about so often together. Am I not fortunate to have such a friend as the one who is to give me this unheard of chance? I must tell you that I don't think I deserve it at all. Some day my benefactor will learn that kindness can be wasted and that barrenness sometimes follows the best of sowing. This friend, of whom I shall write you more fully when I have obtained consent, is so deeply interested in me and my future that the art schools in Europe are to be made accessible to me--poverty-stricken me--because of that interest. There is so much to be gained by a brief tour of Europe and by a short stay in the big art schools that my benefactor says it would be criminal for me to be deprived of the chance because I have no money. We are to go together and we are to stay several months, possibly six. I am to have the best of instruction and am to have the additional lessons acquired only by travel. When I come back to this country I shall be ready to startle the world. We sail next week and I don't know just where we are to go after first reaching England. Of course, I shall write to you every day, dearest, and I shall think of you every moment. It is for you that I am building all my future.

When I am rich and famous, we will go to Europe together, you and I. I am so rushed now for time, getting ready and everything, that I cannot come to see you before I go, but you must pray for me and you must love me more than ever. At the end of this week I give up my place on the paper, and when I come back I expect to open a studio of my own. The only thing I hate about the affair is that I must leave you, but it won't be so hard for you to bear, will it, dear? You know it is for my own and your good."

When all the misery of losing him for months, when all the dread of losing him forever, perhaps, in that voyage across the awful sea, had been lost in the joy over _his_ good fortune, Justine gloried. Though her voice trembled and grew faint and her eyes glistened as she read the news to Mrs. Crane and 'Gene, it was from pride and joy. How proud she was of him!

A week later Dudley Sherrod and wife sailed from New York. As the huge ship left the dock, Celeste, clasping his arm and looking up into his face, somber with thoughts of the future, exclaimed:

"We are at sea! We are at sea!"

"Yes," he said, slowly. "We are at sea."

"I see in a Chicago paper that a feller named Dudley Sherrod wuz married t'other day," remarked Postmaster Hardesty to Parson Marks while the latter was waiting for his mail at the tollgate a few days later. "Cur'os, how derned big this world is, ain't it, parson?"

"Oh, Chicago is a world in itself," said the parson.

"Kinder startled me when I seen that name," Jim went on, pausing in his perusal of a postal card directed to Martin Grimes. "By ginger, Martin's been buyin' hogs up in Grant township--I mean--er--I sh'd say that this is a derned big world," he stammered, guiltily dropping the card behind the counter. "I reckon there's a hunderd Sherrods in Chicago, though."

"Oh, I daresay you'd find three or four Dudley Sherrods there if you looked through the directory."

"Our Jud has jist gone to the old country, Harve Crose tells me."

"Is it possible?"

"Goin' to take some drawin' lessons, I believe."

"I am very glad to hear that he has such a remarkable opportunity. But I was under the impression that he had little or no money." Mr. Marks was now deeply interested.

"Harve said somethin' about a friend payin' all the expenses because he took a likin' to Jud."

"And what provision has he made for Justine?"

"Well, now you're askin' somethin' I cain't answer. Harve's such a derned careless fool he didn't ast anythin' about that part of it."

Later in the afternoon Mr. Marks drove back to the tollgate and asked Hardesty if he had kept the paper containing the notice of the wedding in Chicago. He could not account for the feeling that inspired this act on his part. Something indefinable had formed itself in his brain and he could not rest until he had settled it within himself.

Few Chicago papers found their way into this section of Indiana. Clay township was peculiarly isolated. Its people were lowly, and comfortable in the indifference of the lowly to the progress of the world aside from its politics, its wars and its markets. Farm papers, family story papers and the _Glenville Weekly Tomahawk_ provided the reading for these busy, homely people. Jim Hardesty "took" a Chicago paper, but he was usually too busy whittling and telling stories to read much more than the headlines.

"Dinged if I know what I done with it, parson," said Jim, scratching his head thoughtfully. "'Pears to me I wrapped some bacon up in it fer Mis' Trimmer yesterday. Anythin' pertickler you wanted to see about the weddin'?"

"Do you remember what it said about the wedding?"