irection would have brought him to a decision. He would have accepted
the challenge and stayed; or he would have hesitated, shirked, and left.

There was, however, another force at work upon which he had hardly
calculated at the beginning, and that force now came into full
operation and controlled his decision with margin and to spare. He
loved Miriam; and even had he not loved her, it is probable that her
own calm courage would have put him to shame and made him "face the
music." He could no more have deserted her than he could have deserted
himself. The die was cast.

Moreover, if the certainty that Mr. Skale was trafficking in dangerous
and unlawful knowledge was formidable enough to terrify him, for Miriam,
at least, it held nothing alarming. She had no qualms, knew no
uneasiness. She looked forward to the end with calmness, even with joy,
just as ordinary good folk look forward to a heaven beyond death. For she
had never known any other ideal. Mr. Skale to her was father, mother and
God. He had brought her up during all the twenty years of her life in
this solitude among the mountains, choosing her reading, providing her
companionship, training her with the one end in view of carrying out his
immense and fire-stealing purpose.

She had never dreamed of any other end, and had been so drilled with the
idea that this life was but a tedious training-place for a worthier state
to come, that she looked forward, naturally enough, with confidence and
relief to the great Experiment that should bring her release. She knew
vaguely that there was a certain awful danger involved, but it never for
one instant occurred to her that Mr. Skale could fail. And, so far,
Spinrobin had let no breath of his own terror reach her, or attempted
ever to put into her calm mind the least suggestion that the experiment
might fail and call down upon them the implacable and destructive forces
that could ruin them body and soul forever. For this, plainly expressed,
was the form in which his terror attacked him when he thought about it.
Skale was tempting the Olympian powers to crush him.

It was about this time, however, as has been seen from a slight incident
in the last chapter, that a change began to steal, at first
imperceptibly, then obviously, over their relations together. Spinrobin
had been in the house three weeks--far longer, no doubt, than any of the
other candidates. There only remained now the final big tests. The
preliminary ones