pongy forest soil. She started up suddenly to see Valiant before
her.

He was in a somewhat battered walking suit of brown khaki, with a
leather belt and a felt hat whose brim, stiff with the wet, was curved
down visor-wise over his brow. In an instant he had drawn her upright,
and they stood, looking at each other, drenched and trembling.

"How can you?" he said with a roughness that sounded akin to anger.
"Here in this atrocious weather--like this!" he laid a hand on her arm.
"You're wet through."

"I--don't mind the rain," she answered, drawing away, yet feeling with a
guilty thrill the masterfulness of his tone, as well as its real
concern. "I'm often wet."

His gaze searched her face, feature by feature, noting her pallor, the
blue-black shadows beneath her eyes, the caught breath, uneven like a
child's from crying. He still held her hands in his.

"Shirley," he said, "I know what you intended to tell me by those
flowers--I went to St. Andrew's that night, in the dark, after I read
your letter. Who told you? Your--mother?"

"No, no!" she cried. "She would never have told me!"

His face lighted. With an irresistible movement he caught her to him.
"Shirley!" he cried. "It shan't be! It shan't, I tell you! You can't
break our lives in two like this! It's unthinkable."

"No, no!" she said piteously, pushing him from her. "You don't
understand. You are a man, and men--can't."

"I do understand," he insisted. "Oh, my darling, my darling! It isn't
right for that spectral thing to come between us! Why, it belonged to a
past generation! However sad the outcome of that duel, it held no
dishonor. I know only too well the ruin it brought my father! It's
enough that it wrecked three lives. It shan't rise again, like Banquo's
ghost to haunt ours! I know what you think--I would love you the more,
if I _could_ love you more, for that sweet loyalty--but it's wrong,
dear. It's wrong!"

"It's the only way."

"Listen. Your mother loves you. If she knew you loved me, she would bear
_anything_ rather than have you suffer like this. You say she wouldn't
have told you herself. Why, if my father--"

She tore her hands from his and faced him with a cry. "Ah, that is it!
You knew your father so little. He was never to you what she is to me.
Why, I've been all the life she has had. I remember when she mended my
dolls, and held me when I had scarlet fever, and sang me the songs the
trees sang to themselves at night. I said my pr