en understood.
Ever since Thurston first limped, footsore and hungry, into her life
she had been alternately attracted and repelled by him. His steadfast
patience and generosity had almost melted her at times, but from the
beginning, circumstances had seemed to conspire against the man,
shadowing him with suspicion, and forcing him into opposition to her
will. Mrs. Savine's story had made his unswerving loyalty plain, and
Helen had begun to see that she would with all confidence trust her
life to him; but she was proud, and knowing how she had misjudged him,
hesitated still. As long as a word or a smile could bring him to her
feet she could postpone the day of reckoning at least until his task
was finished, and thus allow him to prove his devotion to the uttermost
test.

Now, however, fate had intervened, tearing away all disguise, and her
eyes were opened. She knew that without him the future would be empty,
and the revelation stirred every fiber of her being. Growing suddenly
cold with a shock of fear she remembered that she had perhaps already
lost him forever. It might be that another more solemn summons had
preceded her own, and that she might call and Geoffrey Thurston would
not hear! He had won his right to rest by work well done, but she--it
now seemed that a lifetime would be too short to mourn him. Helen
shivered at the thought, then she felt as if she were suffocating.
Turning the light low, she flung the long window open. Beyond the
electric glare of the city, with its shapeless pile of roofs and
towering poles, the mountains rose, serenely majestic, in robes of
awful purity. They were beckoning her she felt. The man whom she had
learned to love too late lay among them, perhaps with the strong hands
that had toiled for her folded in peace at last, and, living or dead,
she must go to him. She remembered that the message said,--"Hire a
capable woman in Vancouver," and it brought her a ray of comfort. If
the time was not already past she would ask nothing better than to wait
on him herself. Presently, when there was a hum of voices below,
Helen, white of face but steady in nerves, descended to meet her
hostess.

"I must go back to-morrow, and as it is a fatiguing journey you will
not mind my retiring early," she said to excuse her absence from the
supper party that was assembled after the play.

On reaching the railroad settlement Helen found the doctor in charge of
Thurston willing to avail h