ers. "You wrong me. I find that I take you very seriously
indeed. Believe me. But I have always lived in the present. Come, we
have been grave long enough. Let us be children and take the passing
moment. Madame, Montreal is very far away."

CHAPTER XVII

AFTER THE STORM

We slept at that place that night, and the stars came out clear, and
the water on the sand sang like a harp played by the wind. I slept,
but I dreamed. I thought that Lord Starling came to me, and that the
woman went away. And then the dream shifted, and I stood in a strange,
barren mist-world, and I was alone. I saw the awful loneliness of
creation, and immensity stretched around me. I traveled through
infinite spaces of void and blackness, and found no sound of voice or
life, yet all the time, welling high within me, was a tide, the
fullness of which I had never known in my waking hours. All the
strength that I had hoarded, all the desire for love that I had pushed
aside, all of the fierce commotions of unrest that mark us from the
brute, stirred in me till I felt as if I were suffocating, and cried
out for a helping hand. But I was alone, and gray wastes surrounded
me, and my surge of feeling beat itself out against desolation. I woke
with sweat on my forehead.

I woke to a black night. The stars looked cold, and the men beside me
lay as if dead. I looked up and watched the roll of the planets. The
mystery of infinity which lies naked at midnight in the wilderness
drives some men mad. Heretofore I had been untouched by it except with
delight. Now I crept cautiously to my feet and went softly to the
woman.

I know that I stepped without sound, but as I stood for a moment
looking down at the couch of boughs where she lay I heard a guarded
whisper.

"Monsieur, monsieur."

I bent over her. Her eyes were not only open, but wakeful, and her
small face looked white against the dark blanket.

"What is it, monsieur?" she whispered.

I knelt that I might answer softly. "I woke, and thought you were in
danger. I came to look at you and be sure that all was well. You do
not sleep, madame?"

She shook her head. "I slept, but I dreamed. And you, monsieur?"

"I, too, have dreamed."

I thought that she smiled at me, though her face, when I leaned to see
it clearly, blurred into the dark.

"Will you sleep the rest of the night within sound of my voice?" she
asked, with a little tremble in her whisper. "The wilderness