"Keep that kind of love for them, but - Oh! Don, dear, hold me in your arms and love me as you did in the dear old days gone by. We were happy then. Oh! so happy, happier than I have ever been since, or ever will be again, until you look at me in the same sweet way and tell me that you love me.

"Oh, Don, don't turn away from me - come, come, sweetheart - give me your lips that I may kiss them."

Her voice trembled with agitation - her flushed face quivering with emotion, was close to his, her wavy hair prettily disheveled, brushed his cheeks and fell in clusters about her shoulders.

She clung to his neck desperately. Adoni tried to think calmly, tried in vain to release himself from her wild embrace. "Dear God," his soul cried out, "lead me out of this temptation. To yield to her now would be madness - would destroy-----"

The next moment burning lips were pressed upon his; to now resist her adorable abandon was beyond his physical strength. His arms closed about her yielding form with passionate ardor, their lips met and clung together.

"When woman formed of all that's pure and good Stoops to enslave man's highest thoughts of love She sinks beneath the sphere of heaven's great plan And loses all her hold on things above."

Softly the chapel bells were chiming the hour of noon, pulsing in slow rhythmic cadence through the stirless June air.

The patter of little feet and childish voices, laughing, shouting out in innocent mirth, came ringing through the open window, then followed another happy, sweet voice, "Mama, mama, I'm coming, I'm coming, I have something for you, mama."

That sound contracted Adoni's heart with a sharp pain. It was as if some unforseen messenger of love had spoken to his enthralled soul through the mouth of a little child.

Suddenly a great wave of yearning swept over him. It was as if the deep called unto the deep. The childish voice stirred the divinest impulse of his nature. The call for fatherhood became so strong within him at this moment, that he appealed to the one he called his wife as he never had before. He held her head between his hands, gently bent it backward until he could look deep into her eyes, his own filling with tears as his voice trembled with a holy passion.

"Frances, little wife, promise me now to sin no more, against yourself and nature and that you will no longer deny the holy claim of motherhood, or sin against yourself and the divine creator. I have asked this of you many times; I now ask it again. Promise, sweetheart, will you?"

Frances trembled, a guilty flush crept over her face, her breath came in quick, uneven gasps, her eyes wavered and fell before the tender pleading of his own; in vain she struggled to release herself from his passionate embrace, crying with a tremor of agitation: "You are cruel, Don, remorseless, your eyes drag the very soul from me."

"Your soul, Frances. Yes, your soul I am trying to reach; give me that love------."

"I give it to you," interjected Frances in a low, muffled tone. "Love, the glowing dream of ecstacy that was ours at first I offer you again. I offer you beauty for which men kill themselves. Look at me, blind, foolish man; the woman does not live who is fairer than I and yet you will persist and demand this one thing I can not and will not grant. If you were generous and loved me you would not require this sacrifice."

"Sacrifice -?" Moved apparently by sudden impulse, Adoni's arms relaxed their hold and fell from about her quivering form, the look of passion fled from his dark, handsome face, shadowing every feature with the pallor of death. From his lips fell a sigh of agonized sadness, then he turned his head as if to conceal his tear-stained eyes from her gaze.

Instinctively Frances recoiled from his side, threw herself upon a sofa and buried her head in an armful of pillows.

Moments of intense silence fell between them.

When Adoni again spoke, his physical calm and self-possession did not betray the raging battle within his heart and the soul's victory over body and mind.

"Frances, let there be no more pretense between us and above all things now, we must be honest with ourselves and I ask you not to desecrate the name of love by associating it with the feeling you hold for me.

"You love no one but yourself, your beauty is your curse, your vanity obsesses you like an evil spirit, robbing you of every noble and womanly impulse, plying your iniquitous arts in high society under the shelter of my name and the protecting mantle of religion.

"In the moral scale you fall far below the poor girl I asked you to befriend and are far more dangerous than the women of the street who through necessity sell their bodies for food and shelter. You would tarnish the beautiful temple of your soul for place and power. Power to lure men to the brink of destruction, power to break hearts and homes as you have ours."

Adoni stopped abruptly; a mocking laugh loaded with scorn froze the last words upon his lips as Frances sprang to her feet and faced him with a fiery look in her eyes.

"Fool," she hissed, "poor blind fool, to reproach me of vanity and prate to me of love - divine love; divine slush! I'm disgusted with the whole bunch of hypocrites, hiding their shameless infatuation under the cloak of your lofty ideals. Let me tell you that I believe that you are no better than any other man who allows the women to hang around him, listening with rapture to the pearls of wisdom falling from your lips, preaching the freedom of love. May I ask what freedom your love gives me? What do you offer me? The colorless life of a household slave - that is all. To bear children at your caprice; to sacrifice------"

"Enough!"

Adoni's voice rang out with evident finality: "You have sacrificed the holiest gift God created for every woman. That which is given in pure love is no sacrifice but the greatest happiness and joy of heaven. You have forsaken all these blessings and with it have severed the last link that held my soul in bondage."

"Do I understand you rightly, that we are free from each other?"

"Yes, at last you understand. Henceforth our paths of life shall separate. We are worlds apart."

"Very well," she replied haughtily. "I shall be able to manage nicely without the powerful magic of your name and the hypocritical disguise of your soul's ideals. They make me sick. The whole thing is a farce."

"At this moment I can choose among twenty more exalted in station and more powerful than this little simple, deluded man to whom I now say good-bye,"

Frances started to leave the room with a bitter laugh that made Adoni's blood run cold. On the threshold she turned to him with blazing eyes:

"It may interest you to learn that I have already accepted a charming invitation to go to Paris. I sail next week. It is not likely we shall meet again. Au revoir."

With these last words the woman he once called wife went out of his home and life forever.

Adoni stood motionless where Frances had left him. A deep sense of gratitude welled in his heart for his deliverance. This last painful scene had been the supreme test of his strength. How nearly he had yielded again to her baneful fascination. But for the call of childish voices he might have fallen again, a victim to his passion, duped into another vain and futile compromise.

Adoni was one of those who believe that nothing happens by chance; that the universe is governed by the unerring law of cause and effect. That a divine purpose manifests itself through all phenomena. He had no doubt that their marriage, fruitless as it seemed, served a great lesson for both.

He felt debased and humiliated at the thought of his own weakness; for years he had overrated his strength as he had underrated hers. He now knew she had a will as strong as her purpose. He wondered sadly if anything but a great overmastering sorrow would ever bring the vain, wayward woman to the realization of her parasitic existence. She had deliberately chosen to commercialize her beauty, and had chosen her path where those of her kind say, "Evil be thou my good."

Adoni went to the open window and breathed in the pure sunlit air and closed his eyes in silent meditation.

"It takes great strength to live where you belong, When other people think that you are wrong, People you love, who love you, and whose approval Is a pleasure; and succeed at length In living your belief. Well, it takes strength."