Ruth had been deeply shaken by the events of the inauguration. She returned to New York in the Governor’s private car in a dazed stupor, from which she did not recover for several days.

Morris King’s appeal had stirred elements of her character she had long ignored or suppressed. The old pride of blood from races who had been the conquerors and rulers of the world began to beat its wings against the bars of love.

The special swept along the banks of the majestic Hudson, roaring through cities where she saw crowded express trains held on the side tracks for her to pass.

She drew herself up proudly, and a wave of fierce resentment against the man who had deserted her came like a blast of icy wind from the snow-tipped mountains beyond the western shore of the river.

The splendour of the stately mansion on the hill, the enthusiasm of the people for her old lover, his tenderness and deathless loyalty, and the memories that linked him to her in a cloudless girlhood, began to draw her with terrible fascination.

There was something so old-fashioned and chival-rous about King and his love, she felt a strange melting within her heart. This element of romance she knew he had inherited from her own medieval, home-loving South which she loved. It appealed to her now with a peculiar force—this old-fashioned people and their ways, and a sense of alienation and hostility to Gordon and his radicalism swept once more the storm-clouds across her dark eyes.

She began to question her position and the sanity of her course. She felt the stirrings of social instincts from the high-bred women of old Virginia, the Mother of Presidents and the home of the great constructive minds which had created the Republic. She knew instinctively that she could preside over the White House at Washington with the ease and distinction of the proudest woman who had ever graced it.

Her old lover seemed certain to be the nominee of his party, and his chance of election was one in two. Whatever the outcome, he was young and already a figure of national importance. He was sure to play a greater role in the future than he had ever played in the past.

The idea that she ruled his life and made him what he was, and might be, brought a smile to her lips and the red blood to her cheeks. His fame as a man of cold and selfish ambitions made her knowledge of the secret of his inner life the more sacred and charming.

For two months this battle of pride and blood with the one great passion silently raged in her soul, until she became afraid to hear the ring of her doorbell lest it should be the Governor.

She determined to go to Florida for two weeks on a visit to an old schoolmate in Tampa. There, amid the sunshine and the soft breezes from the gulf, she hoped to see her life and duty in clearer outline.

It was the first week in March which found her seated in the centre of a Pullman car of the Florida Limited of the Atlantic Coast Line.

The train had passed Richmond and was sweeping through the desolate broom-sedge fields still furrowed by those mortal trenches around Petersburg.

Her father had been killed in one of those trenches, a gallant colonel cheering a ragged handful of half-starved men in gray, unmindful of the order of retreat until engulfed by the grand army that swept over them like a tidal wave.

She took the children into the dining-car and found every table full except one, and two seats at that one already reserved. Lucy was placed next to the window, Frank next to the aisle, and the mother crowded between them with an arm encircling each.

She had given the order to the waiter, and was pointing out to Lucy the lines of the battle-field on which her father had died.

“There, dear, it is,” she said, with a tremor in her voice, pointing to an angle in the trench on the crest of a ridge. “There is where grandfather was killed.”

While Lucy looked and Frank climbed into her lap and was peering out the window, the conductor placed a beautiful woman and tall, distinguished-looking man in the reserved seats at the same table, opposite.

The boy turned, still on his knees, in his mother’s lap, and faced the newcomers, whom Ruth had not been able to see for the child’s movements.

He stared for a moment at the man with wide-dilated eyes, his body suddenly stiffened, and with a half sob, half cry, he sprang to the floor.

“Look! Mama, dear—look! It’s Papa!”

He threw himself on Gordon, and his little arms held his neck convulsively.

The man blushed like a girl as his great trembling fingers smoothed the boy’s hair.

Kate’s face was scarlet, Ruth turned pink and white, and Lucy, trembling and sobbing, began to scramble across her mother’s lap.

The boy’s hands tenderly framed his father’s crimson cheeks, he kissed him, and again and again his arms clung in passionate clasp about his neck.

“Oh, Papa, we’ve got you at last! Why didn’t you come? We’ve been praying, Lucy and me, every night for you, and we thought you’d never come back. Mama said you’d gone a long, long way—”

Ruth was choking with emotion, and yet she smiled through her tears. She knew those tiny hands were deep down in the man’s soul sweeping his heart-strings with wild, sweet music.

The brunette looked across the table into the trembling face of the fair one. The dark eyes were now tranquil, whatever the storm within. A faint sinile suffused her face with mantling blushes.

Lucy pulled the boy’s arms from around her father’s neck and slipped her own softer, slender ones there. She kissed him, and laid her brown curls on his breast. Her little hands patted his broad shoulder, and she murmured:

“Papa, dear, I love you!”

Kate attempted to rise, bit her lip, and fairly hissed in Gordon’s ear:

“End this scene! Find another table!”

Gordon drew Lucy’s arm from his neck and whispered:

“They are all filled, my dear.”

The blue eyes blazed with fury as she cried under her breath:

“Get up and let me out!”

Gordon gently drew the children’s arms away, placed them back in their seats, rose, still blushing, and accompanied Kate back into their car.

At first the boy was too astonished to speak or protest. When he found his voice he whispered in wonder:

“Mama, who is she?”

Ruth placed a finger on her trembling lips and shook her head.

“Will she let him come back?” he asked, anxiously.

“Hush, dear,” the mother said, softly.

The boy put his arms on the table and burst into tears.

Lucy sat very quiet, glancing into her mother’s face wistfully. And then she felt under the table, found one of her hands and began to stroke it gently.

When Gordon returned to his car, immediately behind the one in which Ruth was riding, Kate sat for half an hour in furious silence, refusing to speak or answer a question. He had never seen her so beside herself with anger.

She turned on him in a sudden flash and asked with frowning emphasis:

“I wonder why you dragged me off on this idiotic trip?”

“I was worn out and needed the rest,” he answered, quietly.

She looked at him with defiance.

“I don’t believe a word of it,” she said, indignantly. “You wish to get me out of New York. You were too much of a coward to tell Overman your suspicions that he was trying to win your wife.”

Gordon looked out of the window in silence.

“We will stop at the next station and go back. I don’t care for any more free vaudeville shows in the dining-car.”

“Don’t be absurd, my dear; you need not meet again.”

Gordon smiled in spite of himself.

Tears of vexation filled the violet eyes. “For all of your loud talk of freedom, I believe you still love that first wife of yours! And I am beginning to despise you.”

“Come, Kate, this is too absurd. How could I help the accident of such a meeting? I had not seen the children since our separation. She has always taught them to love me. How could I prevent it if I wished?”

“Yes; and you love her, too,” she insisted stubbornly, and the full red lips trembled and parted, and then softened into a—smile.

“But don’t flatter yourself I care, or am jealous, because this scene has humiliated and angered me. You’re not worth a moment’s jealousy, you great hulking baby!”

Gordon pressed the button and ordered a lunch served in their seat, and smilingly refused to continue the quarrel.

When the train crossed the North Carolina line it ran into the belt of the advancing spring rains from the South. At Wilson, it was pouring in torrents and had been raining steadily for two days. At Fayetteville, the train was an hour late, delayed by a washout.

Lucy had gone to sleep with her arm around her mother’s neck and one hand resting softly on her cheek. Ruth’s heart had been deeply touched by this gentle and silent sympathy of the dawning sex consciousness of her daughter’s soul. The quick little eyes had seen the tragedy, and a voice within whispered its soft words of new, mysterious kinship.

Soon after the train pulled out of Fayetteville it struck the long, straight run of the South Carolina low country. For thirty miles the track is as straight as an arrow, and before the gleaming headlight of the engine shows on the track the watchers at the stations can see the trembling light in the distant sky beyond the sixteen-mile line of the horizon.

The dark eyes were dozing in fitful sleep with the old spell of love once more enveloping the soul. She was dreaming of him, laughing at some boyish prank.

Over the straight track, down grade, the Limited was sweeping at full speed through the black storm.

Suddenly Ruth was awakened by a sickening crash as though the earth had collided with a star and been crushed as an egg-shell. The car seemed to leap a hundred feet into the air, plunge through space, and strike the ground with a dull smash that sent dust and splinters flying through every inch of space.

She instinctively seized the children, trembling and dazed, and hugged them close. Merciful God, would it never stop! Now the car was plowing through the earth—now falling end over end, straining, grinding, roaring, smashing into death and eternity!

At last—it had seemed an hour—it stopped with a shivering crash.

And then the blackness of night, the swash of gusts of rain overhead, and the moan of the wind. Not another sound. Not a groan or a cry or a human voice.

Was she dead or alive? Ruth felt she must scream this awful question or faint. The children began to sob and she gasped in gratitude:

“Thank God, they are not dead!”

She attempted to get out of her berth and found she must climb. The car was lying on its side. She looked out into the aisle through her curtains and everything was dark. The air choked her with dust, and she caught the odour of burning wool. Deep down below somewhere she could hear, in the lull of the wind, the roar of waters, and feel the car sway as though it were hanging on the edge of an embankment or trestle and about to topple into a torrent.

She pulled the children out into the aisle and tried to crawl toward the end of the car, only to find it crushed into a shapeless mass and the way piled with debris.

A light suddenly flashed up and the steady crackle of flames began. From the debris below came the scream of a woman for help.

She drew back her slender fist and tried to smash the double plate glass windows and only bruised her tapering fingers.

She found a step-ladder and broke the windows out.

Lifting herself on the seat, and peering through, she saw by the glare of the buring wreck the swirling waters of the river twenty feet below.

She rushed back to her berth, on the lower side, smashed the windows, and found the car resting on another sleeper. The blow had broken through both sets of windows.

She lightly sprang through and drew the children after her. A stifled groan, as from one straining the last muscle in some desperate effort, came from a berth. Rushing forward, still dragging the children, she found Kate pinned on her back, with the flames leaping closer each moment.

The violet eyes turned pitifully on Ruth, staring wide with the set agony of speechless fear and searched her face for the verdict of life.

A faint cry came from the full lips, white at the thought of death:

“Help me, for God’s sake; I’ll be burning in a moment!”

Did the dark eyes waver with an instant’s he............