rm blood rise to her cheeks. It seemed to her that he
had paid her a great and sincere compliment in taking it for granted
that if she had loved him she would still have bidden him undertake his
perilous duty.

"Ah," she said, "I don't know. Perhaps I should not have been brave
enough."

It was not a judicious answer. She realized that, but she felt that she
must speak with unhesitating candor.

"After all," she added, "can you be quite sure that this is your duty?"

Wyllard kept his eye on her. "No," he said, "I can't. In fact, when I
sit down to think I can see at least a dozen reasons why it doesn't
concern me. In a case of this kind that's always easy. It's just borne
in upon me--I don't know how--that I have to go."

Agatha crossed to the window and sat down. He leaned upon a chairback
looking at her gravely.

"Well," he continued, "we'll go on a little further. It seems better
that I should make what's in my mind quite clear to you. You see,
Captain Dampier and I start in a week."

Agatha was conscious of a shock of dismay.

"We may be back before the winter, but it's also quite likely that we
may be ice-nipped before our work is through, and in that case it would
be a year at least before we reach Vancouver," he went on steadily after
a little pause. "In fact, there's a certain probability that all of us
may leave our bones up there. Now, there's a thing I must ask you. Is it
only a passing trouble that stands between you and Gregory? Are you
still fond of him?"

Agatha's heart beat fast. It would have been a relief to assure herself
that she was as fond of Gregory as she had been, but she could not do
it.

"That is a point on which I cannot answer you," she declared in a voice
that trembled.

"We'll let it go at that. The fact that Gregory sent me over for you
implied a certain obligation. How far events have cleared me of it I
don't know--and you don't seem willing to tell me. But I believe there
is now less cause than there was for me to thrust my own wishes into the
background, and, as I start in another week, the situation has forced my
hand. I can't wait as I had meant to do, and it would be a vast relief
to know that I had made your future safer than it is before I go. Will
you marry me at the settlement the morning I start?"

Half-conscious, as she was, of the unselfishness which had prompted this
suggestion, Agatha faced him in hot anger.

"Can you suppose for a moment that I would agree