k."

The name came so easily to her lips! It was the first time he had ever
heard her utter it. It swept away his flying restraint even as the
flame of powder snaps through a fuse to explosion; and he made a
sudden, swinging step toward her, and caught her in his arms savagely,
greedily, tenderly fierce. All his love was bursting, molten, to
speech; but she lifted both hands and thrust herself away from him.

"Oh, not that!" she said. "Not that! I wish you had not. It robs me of
my wish. I wanted you to take my money as a comrade, not as my---- Oh,
Dick! Dick! Don't say anything to me now, or do anything now! Please
let me have my way. You will win. I know it! The Cross must pay. It
shall pay! And when it does, then--then----"

She stood, trembling, and abashed by her own words, before him. Slowly
the delicacy of her mind, the romanticism of her dreams, the great,
unselfish love within her, fluttering yet valiant, overwhelmed him
with a sense of infinite unworthiness and weakness. He took his hat
from his head, leaned over, and caught one of the palpitant hands in
both his own, and raised it reverently to his lips. It was as if he
were paying homage to heaven devoutly.

"I understand," he said softly, still clinging to the fingers, every
throb of which struck appealingly on his heartstrings. "Forgive me,
and--yet--don't. Joan, little Joan, I can't take your money. It would
make me a weakling. But I can make the Cross win. If it never had a
chance before, it will have now. It must! God wouldn't let it be
otherwise!"

"Help me to my horse," she said faintly. "We mustn't talk any more.
Let us keep our hopes as they are."

He lifted her lightly to the saddle, and the big black, with
comprehending eyes, seemed to stand as a statue after she was in her
seat. The purple shadows of the mountain twilight were, with a soft
and tender haze, tinting the splendid peak above them. Everything was
still and hushed, as if attuned to their parting. She leaned low over
her saddle to where, as before something sacred, he stood with parted
lips, and upturned face, bareheaded, in adoration. Quite slowly she
bent down and kissed him full on the lips, and whispered: "God bless
you, dear, and keep you--for me!"

The abrupt crashing of a horse's hoofs awoke the echoes and the world
again. She was gone; and, for a full minute after the gray old rocks
and the shadows had encompassed her, there stood in the purple
twilight a man too overco