gh. "I couldn't
sleep.... Father spent the afternoon exhorting me ... he was trying to
make me promise not to see you again ... and I was trying to keep him
from exciting himself." Her voice was so tense now as to be hardly
recognizable. "Every few minutes it looked as if he were about to fly
into a passion.... You know what that would mean ... and of course
I--I--couldn't promise."

She paused for breath, but before he could speak, rushed on.

"It's been an absolute reign of terror. Every nerve in my body is
jumping and quivering.... I think I'm going mad."

"Listen." The man spoke as one might to a child who has awakened,
terrified, out of a nightmare and is afraid to be alone. "I'm coming out
there. You need to talk to some one. I'll leave the car out of hearing
in the road."

"No, no!" she exclaimed in a wildly fluttering timbre of protest. "If he
woke up it would be worse than this afternoon--it might kill him!"

But Stuart answered her with a quiet note of finality. "Wrap up
well--it's cool outside--and meet me on the verandah. We can talk more
safely that way than by 'phone. I'm going to obey the doctor
implicitly--unless you fail to meet me. If you do that--" he paused a
moment before hanging up the receiver--"I'll knock on the door."

The moon had not yet set as he started on foot up the driveway of the
manse and the bare trees stood out stark and inky against the silver
mists. Before he was more than half-way to the house he saw her coming
to meet him, casting backward glances of anxiety over her shoulder.

She was running with a ghostlike litheness through the moonlight, her
eyes wide and frightened and her whole seeming one of unreasoning panic
so that the man, who knew her dauntlessness of spirit, felt his heart
sink.

"You shouldn't have done it," she began in a reproachful whisper. "You
shouldn't have come!" But he only caught her in his arms and held her so
close to his own heart that the wild palpitation of her bosom was calmed
against its steadiness. Her arms went gropingly round his neck and
clutched him as if he were the one stable thing that stood against an
allied ferocity of wind and wave.

"You needed me," he said. "And when you need me I come--even if I have
to come like a burglar."

The eyes which she raised to his face were tearless--but hardly sane.
She was fear-ridden by ghosts that struck at her normality and she
whispered, "Suppose he died by my fault?"

At all costs, the lov