ms, but
quite another to take her unawares in a wilderness and, upon the spot,
claim her before she knows what the surrender may involve. In years to
follow a time might come when she would look at me through
shadows--shadows that grow dark with perplexity over some irrevocable
step--and I did not want to sow a seed to ripen into one of these. It is
distracting enough for a man to bury his existing ghosts, but sheer
madness deliberately to raise a crop of new ones.

In this case I did not so much fear a race with other men in forms of
rivals. I had reached my goal, her arms, and nothing could undo that.
But her conscience--who dares claim the conscience of another! For two
days, then, Monsieur could fight it out alone with her, and if his
arguments prevailed--well, I would set about destroying them.

After luncheon, with a brevity that she must have understood meant
torture, I explained the compact, saying that I could ask for no more
promises until two days had passed; and when she would have replied that
her promise had been given I warned her that Monsieur had not even begun
to show his power. She seemed a little frightened at this and, but for
the sterling mark indubitably pressed upon her sense of right, I think
she might have consented to fly from him.

"For two days, then, I'm not to see you," she said simply.

"No," I cried. "But for two days I can't tell you how I love you; how
you're the very breath of my life, the control of my brain and body and
soul, how I'll finally win you against everything! I'll see you, and be
with you, but for two long, weary, interminable days I can't tell you
that!"

"Mightn't you," she smiled, a wee bit naughtily, "remind me each morning
of those things you must not tell me during the two long, weary,
interminable days? Then you wouldn't be so likely to forget, and break
your contract."

"Temptress! I wish we'd walked to the fort!" For, while we stood out of
hearing, we were still in sight of the others.

"So do I," she laughed now, her eyes expressive of a most fascinating
wickedness, a daredeviltry born of the knowledge that the proximity of
outsiders made her safe. Tommy says that girls often take this unfair
advantage of a fellow. Then Monsieur, believing the time for
explanations should be up, came toward us.

At three o'clock our cavalcade started across the prairie for Efaw
Kotee's settlement. Tommy and Monsieur were keen to see it, and
especially was the latter ke