e which swiftly bore him onward through the early night
from his own dugout toward the old Frenchman's store. Not fifty steps
from Marquette's he stopped abruptly, listening to the soft singing.
It was not so dark that he could not make out the slender, exquisite
form of the young Mexican. Ramon Garcia, wrapped about in his long
coat like a cavalier in a graceful cloak, his face lifted a little, his
head bared, was close to a certain window of Pere Marquette's. Drennen
knew whose window.

With no conscious desire to eavesdrop, merely stopped by an unforeseen
contingency, Drennen stood still. Garcia, his eyes upon a line of
light under the window shade, did not see him. It was hardly more than
an instant that Drennen stood there, watching; but the little drama was
enacted before he moved on.

Slowly, while the last notes were fainting away plaintively, the window
was raised. Drennen saw Ygerne Bellaire, half in light, half in
shadow. She leaned out. She was laughing softly. Garcia, his bow
carrying to the ground his hat which in the dim light appeared to
Drennen's fancy to wear the black plume which would not have been
misplaced there, came closer to the window. Upon the girl's face was a
gaiety Drennen had not seen there until now; her lips curved to it, her
eyes danced with it. She had a little meadow flower in her hand;
Drennen wondered if she had been eagerly selecting it from a cluster of
its fellows while Garcia sang.

"You are not real, senor," she said lightly. "I wonder if you know
that?"

"It is you . . ." he began, his voice charged with the music about
which the man's soul was builded.

"No, no," she laughed. "You are not real. You have just wandered out
of an old romance like a ghost; when the sun comes up you'll have to
creep back between dusty covers of a book a hundred years old."

He put out a hand towards hers on the window sill.

"Give me the little flower," he pleaded, southern lover-wise. "I shall
never let it go away from its place on my heart, though I fear," and
his hand crept a little closer, "that my heart will burst with the joy
of it!"

The little meadow flower went from her fingers to his.

"A flower for your song, senor. A poor little flower which should have
golden petals."

"Living," he murmured, no heights or depths of sentiment seeming beyond
him, "it shall always be with me, a joy so sweet that it almost kills.
Dead, I shall be happy just to wear it."

She