THE SECOND BEST Sara laid down her pen and very soberly re-read the letter she had just written.

It was to Tim Durward, telling him the engagement between them must be at an end, and its accomplishment had been a matter of sore embarrassment and mental struggle.

Sara hated giving pain, and she knew that this letter, taking from Tim all--and it was so painfully little--that she had ever given him, must bring very bitter pain to the man to whom, as friend and comrade, she was deeply attached.
It was barely a month since she had promised to marry him, and it was a difficult, ungracious task, and very open to misapprehension, to write and rescind that promise.
Yet it was characteristic of Sara that no other alternative presented itself to her.

Now that she was sure Garth cared for her--whether their mutual love must remain for ever unfulfilled, unconsummated, or not--she knew that she could never give herself to any other man.
She folded and sealed the letter, and then sat quietly contemplating the consequences that it might entail.

Almost inevitably it would mean a complete estrangement from the Durwards.