him to ring true. And he
knew what must be. His hands lay clenched between them. Jean seemed to
rise up before him again at the grave-sides, and from his lips he
forced the words:

"Then there is something more--than the baby?"

"Yes," she replied, and dropped her hands from his shoulders. "There is
that of which I warned you--something which you could not know if you
lived a thousand years."

He caught her to him now, so close that his breath swept her face.

"Josephine, if it was the baby alone, you would give yourself to me?
You would be my wife?"

"Yes."

Strength leaped back into him, the strength that made her love him. He
freed her and stood back from the log, his face ablaze with the old
fighting spirit. He laughed, and held out his arms without taking her.

"Then you have not killed my hope!" he cried.

His enthusiasm, the strength and sureness of him as he stood before
her, sent the flush back into her own face. She rose, and reached to
one of his outstretched hands with her own.

"You must hope for nothing more than I have given you," she said. "A
month from to-day you will leave Adare House, and will never return."

"A month!" He breathed the words as if in a dream.

"Yes, a month from to-day. You will go off on a snowshoe journey. You
will never return, and they will think that you have died in the deep
snows. You have promised me this. And you will not fail me?"

"What I have promised I will do," he replied, and his voice was now as
calm as her own. "And for this one month--you are mine!"

"To love as I have given you love, yes."

For a moment he folded her in his arms; and then he drew back her hood
so that he might lay a hand on her shining hair, and his eyes were
filled with a wonderful illumination as he looked into her upturned
face.

"A month is a long time, my Josephine," he whispered. "And after that
month there are other months--years and years of them, and through
years, if it must be, my hope will live. You cannot destroy it, and
some day, somewhere, you will send word to me. Will you promise to do
that?"

"If such a thing becomes possible, yes."

"Then I am satisfied," he said. "I am going to fight for you,
Josephine. No man ever fought for a woman as I am going to fight for
you. I don't know what this strange thing is that separates us. But I
can think of nothing terrible enough to frighten me. I am going to
fight, mentally and physically, day and night--until you are my