keep a wife—an extravagant woman as I was then. So, he went away, and—and I followed him. You must think me utterly, terribly bad—but I loved him. I followed him right up into the wilds of the Yukon, and—and I lived with him."
"Poor, poor Elsie." Monica's dismay had passed, and she gently squeezed the hand she was still holding. The pressure seemed to give the other courage to proceed.
"You mustn't pity me too much. I—I was very happy. I was very happy until I knew about—my little son. It was then that I realized the awful sin I had committed. It was then I knew the cruel wrong I had done to that unborn life. I—I think I was nearly distracted when it all came upon me." Her voice had risen. It was almost strident with emotion. "For weeks I thought and thought what I could do to remedy my wrong, and at last I took my courage in both hands. I told Leo, and—and asked him to marry me—for the child's sake."
"For the child's sake?"
The admission which the words implied filled the simple Monica with something like panic.
"You see, Leo never loved me as I loved him."
"Oh, Elsie, Elsie!"
"Yes, dear, I forced myself upon him."
The tragedy of her sister's life had almost overwhelmed the girl. The whole pitiful story wrung her heart with its pathos, its shame. Her sister. Her beautiful, clever sister. Oh, it was too, too dreadful.
After a while Elsie roused herself again. There was a lot yet to be said, and she knew her time was short.
"I am all to blame. You mustn't blame Leo," she said earnestly. "He was a good man to me. I know you think he has deserted me. But he hasn't. That is not him. He promised to marry me, and, had I lived, he would have kept that promise. We were coming down country for that purpose." She paused. "Then something happened which made it necessary for him to go on ahead. That's how I came to make the journey with the Indian. It—it couldn't be helped. You—you mustn't blame Leo. He will be looking for me. Is very likely looking for me now. But it is too late. That is why I want you to promise me something."
Monica waited. She could find nothing to say. She was learning another of the bitter lessons which life has to teach when the book is once opened. Presently the other went on—
"You see, neither of us can now remedy the wrong I have done my little son. As I said, it is too late. I shall be gone before Leo can marry me." The big eyes became eager. They looked up with piteous straining into the gentle face before them. "Do you see? Oh, Mon, do you understand? My boy—our boy has no father; and very, very soon will have no mother. Oh, Mon, what can I do, what can I say? Can—can you help me?"
But Monica was gazing helplessly before her. The warmth of her love for her erring sister was no less. But she was thinking, thinking, striving with all her might to seek a solution to the painful tangle of her poor sister's life.
"I—I—can't—— Tell me, Elsie—tell me anything I can do for him. I don't seem able to think for myself," she cried hopelessly at last.
Something of Monica's difficulty seemed to communicate itself to the other. Her brows drew together in perplexity.
"It is so hard," she said suddenly. "I have thought and thought, and I can only see one possible hope—only one. That hope is—you."
"How? Oh, Elsie, tell me how. What can I do?"
With a sudden effort the mother propped herself up with her elbows behind her. Her dying eyes were burning bright with feverish light. All the hope of her poor dying soul looked up into her sister's face as her final appeal rushed to her lips.
"How? Why, why, by taking him as your own son. How? Oh, Mon, his own mother is taken from him. Then give him another. Make him your own child—whose father is dead. It would be easy for you. You married young, and your—your husband died—died at sea. He will never know differently. No one will question it. Oh, my dear, don't you see? Bring him up as your own child, born in wedlock, and never let him know his mother's shame. Promise me, your sacred promise to a dying woman, that he shall never know, through you, his mother's shame, and his own disgrace. Promise it to me, Mon, it is the only thing that can give me peace now. Forget everything I have told you. Forget the disgrace I have brought on you. Forget everything except—except only your promise. Promise! Promise!"
Her fingers tightened almost painfully upon Monica's hand. She was laboring under a fierce emotion, almost sufficient to bring on a collapse. The feverish eyes were bloodshot, and a hectic flush burned on her thin cheeks.
The impulse of the moment was upon Monica, and she leaned forward. Her other hand was tenderly raised to the woman's moist brow, in a loving, soothing manner.
"I promise, dear; I promise on my sacred word that what you ask me shall be done. Henceforth he shall be my son. Nor shall he ever know through me the cruel wrong the world has done to you. I promise you, Elsie, dear, freely, freely. And all my life I will strive to keep the real truth of his birth from him."
"Thank God!"
The reaction was terrible. The dying woman fell back on her pillows, and her features suddenly became so ghastly that Monica sprang from her seat in wild alarm. She ran to the door to summon the nurse. But the voice from the bed stayed her.
"No, Mon, not yet." Then the dying woman added with an irresistible appeal, "Give me my boy, for—for a few minutes. After that——"
Monica ran to obey with an only too thankful heart. But her instinct warned her that the end was not far off. She laid the sleeping child tenderly by its mother's side, and placed her thin arm gently under its shoulders. She felt maybe she was doing wrong, but—poor Elsie.
Elsie's eyes thanked her, but her voice remained silent. And for a long while there was an unbroken quiet in the room.
Monica moved to the window and stood with her back turned to the bed. Somehow she felt that these moments were too sacred for another's eyes to witness. Slowly fresh tears gathered in her eyes, tears of sympathy and love, and one by one they rolled unheeded, slowly down her cheeks. And as they fell the last moments of her sister's life ebbed peacefully away.
CHAPTER XI
TWO STRANGERS IN SAN SABATANO
Monica's life suddenly became filled to overflowing. She was no longer a child, but a woman of a maturity that was almost absurd in one so young. The happy, irresponsible girlhood she had so long enjoyed in her mother's modest uptown apartment had quite gone. Whatever the future might hold of happiness for her, certainly freedom from the more serious cares of life would never again be hers.
Five years ago she and her mother had bade Elsie good-bye in the same humble apartment, when the elder girl had left San Sabatano to go on the stage in New York. Monica was twelve then. Twelve; and her young eyes and younger mind were filled with a boundless envy and admiration for the beautiful sister who was to bask in the wonderful limelight of the stage, and wear clothes far beyond the beauty of all dreams; and jewels—jewels, whose splendor was incomparable to the beauty of her lovely, lovely Elsie. Had she only known it she was very near the truth when she thought of the jewels her sister would wear.
