speakable. No words seemed
possible. He could only strain her to him, silently, with all his
strength, and realise that she was safely there at last.

Myra had lifted her arms, and laid them lightly about his neck, hiding
her face upon his breast.... He never knew exactly when he began to
realise a subtle change about the quality of her embrace; the woman's
passionate tenderness seemed missing; it rather resembled the trustful
clinging of a little child. An uneasy foreboding, for which he could not
account, assailed Jim Airth.

"Kiss me, Myra!" he said, peremptorily, and she, lifting her sweet face
to his, kissed him at once. But it was the pure loving kiss of a little
child.

Then she withdrew herself from his embrace; and, standing back, he looked
at her, perplexed. The light upon her face seemed hardly earthly.

"Oh, Jim," she said, "God's ways are wonderful! I have such news for you,
my friend. I thank God, it came before you had gone beyond recall. And I,
who had been the one, unwittingly, to add so terribly to the weight of
the lifelong cross you had to bear, am privileged to be the one to lift
it quite away. Jim--_you did not do it!_"

Jim Airth gazed at her in troubled amazement. Into his mind,
involuntarily, came the awesome Scotch word "fey."

"I did not do what, dear?" he asked, gently, as if he were speaking to a
little child whom he was anxious not to frighten.

"You did not kill Michael."

"What makes you think I did not kill Michael, dear?" questioned Jim
Airth, gently.

"Because," said Myra, with clasped hands, "Michael is alive."

"Dearest heart," said Jim Airth, tenderly, "you are not well. These awful
three weeks, and what went before, have been too much for you. The strain
has upset you. I was a brute to go off and leave you. But you knew I did
what I thought right at the time; didn't you, Myra? Only now I see the
whole thing quite differently. Your view was the true one. We ought to
have acted upon it, and been married at once."

"Oh, Jim," said Myra, "thank God we didn't! It would have been so
terrible now. It must have been a case of 'Even there shall Thy hand lead
me, and Thy right hand shall hold me.' In our unconscious ignorance, we
might have gone away together, not knowing Michael was alive."

Beads of perspiration stood on Jim Airth's forehead.

"My darling, you are ill," he said, in a voice of agonised anxiety. "I am
afraid you are very ill. Do sit down quietly on the couch,