Haig and himself. It would be just like her, wouldn't it, to try to
bring them together? Well, let her try it! He would be the last man in
Paradise Park. And so on, until he was once more almost satisfied with
himself.

The faithful Smythe, meanwhile, brought Marion almost daily news of
Philip. That he was rapidly recovering she heard with a ringing joy,
which had its alloy of fear; for she knew that the day he felt himself
to be in full possession of his powers he would attempt again to
conquer Sunnysides. So from day to day her apprehension mounted until
it became well-nigh insupportable. And her own helplessness maddened
her. What could she do? Nothing! Nothing but wait, and pray God to
protect him. Every night she prayed for him, and every morning, on her
knees; and every hour the prayer was in her heart. She rode sometimes
as far as the farther edge of the woods that crowned the ridge, and
looked long at the little valley, and at the smoke rising in a thin
spiral from the ranch house that she could not see. At the right of it
would be the cottage, and at the left the barn, and the corral where
Sunnysides bided his time. And then, having looked until she could
endure no more, she would ride slowly home, to await the next coming
of Smythe with news.

Once she went to the glade of the columbines. She did not feel any
longer the antipathy she once felt to the spot that had, in one
devastating moment, revealed to her the fatuity of her dreams. Now she
was in search of the old hopes that she had once revelled in, while
she gathered armloads of columbines, and imagined they were for
Philip.

Dismounting eagerly at the foot of the little hill, she plunged
through the brush, and halted at the margin of the glade, stricken
with the keenest disappointment. The columbines were gone; only a
brave, pale blossom here and there lingered pathetically in a waste of
dried and drooping stems. She stood staring at them a moment; then,
with a cry, she threw herself down among them, and gave herself up to
grief, letting the tears come in what flood they would, while her hand
clutched one poor survivor of the summer glory.

Gone, then, like the summer, were all those dreams. And very soon must
come the end of all. Barely two weeks remained to her in the
Park,--barely two weeks in which the miracle that she awaited could be
wrought. What miracle could move him when her love had failed? And
yet--Once, in her desperation, she suggested