forgot
everything except that she had bared her secret to him, and in baring
it had given herself to him. Even as her hands pressed now against his
breast he kissed her lips again, and his arms tightened about her.

"They are coming to the door, Philip," she panted, straining against
him. "We must not be found like this!"

The voice was booming in the hall again, calling her name, and in a
moment Philip was on his feet raising Josephine to him. Her face still
was white. Her eyes were still on the verge of fear, and as the steps
came nearer he brushed back the warm masses of her hair and whispered
for the twentieth time, as if the words must convince her: "I love
you!" He slipped an arm about her waist, and Josephine's fingers
nervously caught his hand.

Then the door was flung open. Philip knew that it was the master of
Adare House who stood on the threshold--a great, fur-capped giant of a
man who seemed to stoop to enter, and in whose eyes as they met
Philip's there was a wild and half-savage inquiry. Such a man Philip
had not expected to see; awesome in his bulk, a Thorlike god of the
forests, gray-bearded, deep-chested, with shaggy hair falling out from
under his cap, and in whose eyes there was the glare which Philip
understood and which he met unflinchingly.

For a moment he felt Josephine's fingers grip tighter about his own;
then with a low cry she broke from him, and John Adare opened his arms
to her and crushed his bearded face down to hers as her arms encircled
his neck. In the gloom of the hall beyond them there appeared for an
instant the thin, dark face of Jean Jacques Croisset. In a flash it had
come and gone. In that flash the half-breed's eyes had met Philip's,
and in them was a look that made the latter take a quick step forward.
His impulse was to pass John Adare and confront Jean in the hall. He
held himself back, and looked at Josephine and her father. She had
pushed the cap from the giant's head and had taken his bearded face
between her two hands, and John Adare was smiling down into her white,
pleading face with the gentleness and worship of a woman. In a moment
he broke forth into a great rumbling laugh, and looked over her head at
Philip.

"God bless my soul, if I don't almost believe my little girl thought I
was coming home to murder her!" he cried. "I guess she thought I'd hate
you for stealing her away from me the way you did. I have contemplated
disliking you, quite seriously, too. Bu