ermined.

"Who are you?" demanded McBirney, sternly, staring at her. There was
something surging up inside of him, unknown, unreasonable; heart's
blood was rushing about his system inconveniently; his pulse was
hammering--why? He knew why; this sudden vision of a girl reminded
him--took him back--he cut through that idea swiftly; he was ill,
unbalanced, obsessed with one memory, but he would not allow himself to
go mad.

"Who are you?" he repeated sternly. And the girl turned and faced him
and looked up into his grim, tortured face, half shy, half laughing,
all glad.

She spoke softly. "Hope," she said. "You needed me"--she said, "and I
came."

With that, with the unreasonable certainty that happens at times in
affairs which go beyond reason, he was certain. Yet he did not dare to
be certain.

"Who are you?" he threw at her for the third time, and his eyes flamed
down into the changing face, the face which he had never known, which
he seemed to have known since time began. The laughter left it then
and she gazed at him with a look which he had not seen in a woman's
eyes before. "I think you know," she said. "Toddy Winthrop isn't the
only one. You saved me--Oh, you've saved me too." Every inflection of
the voice brought certainty to him; the buoyant, soft voice which he
remembered. "I am Hope Stuart," she said. "I am August First."

"Ah!" He caught her hands, but she drew them away. "Not yet," she
said, and the promise in the denial thrilled him. "You've got to
know--things."

"Don't think, don't dream that I'll let you go, if you still care," he
threw at her hotly. And with that the thought of two days before
stabbed into him. "Ah!" he cried, and stood before his happiness
miserably.

"What?" asked the girl.

"I'm not fit to speak to you. I'm disgraced; I'm a coward; you don't
know, but I let--that child be killed as much as if he had not been
saved by a miracle. It wasn't my fault he was saved. I didn't mean to
save him. I meant to save myself," he went on with savage accusation.

"Tell me," commanded the girl, and he told her.

"It's what I thought," she answered him then. "I told the doctor what
Dick said, this morning. The doctor said it was the commonest thing in
the world, after a blow on the head, to forget the last minutes before.
You'll never remember them. You did save him. Your past--your
character decided for you"--here was his own bitter thought turned to
heavenly s