is wife."

Electra drew a long breath.

"Then," she answered, "I shall know what to do."

He bent toward her an embracing look. It promised her a great deal:
comprehension, sympathy, almost a kind of love.

"What shall you do?" he asked.

Electra choked a little. Her throat hurt her, not at the loss of what
she was going to relinquish, but at the greatness of sacrifice with
somebody by to take cognizance of the act. He would not, like Madam
Fulton, call her a fool. He might even see where the action placed her,
on ground he also had a right to, from other deeds as noble.

"I supposed I had inherited my brother's property," she said, in a low
and penetrating voice. "I shall make it over to her."

MacLeod put out his hand, and she laid hers within it. When he spoke, it
was with a moved restraint.

"That is a good deal to do."

"It is incumbent on me--ethically." At that instant she had a throb of
high triumph in remembering that he, at least, would not gird at her
choice of terms.

"It is what you would do," he said warmly. "It is exactly what you would
do."

"I cannot do otherwise."

They seemed to be engaged in antiphonal praises of abstract right. It
gave Electra a solemn satisfaction. She could hardly leave the subject.
"I wish to do everything in my power," she announced. "I cannot ask her
to live here, because I may not be here long myself."

"You will marry Peter and go away!"

Electra felt her face growing warm in the dusk, and an unreasonable
vexation possessed her against any one who should have mapped out her
purposes and given him the chart. He might know her. He was evidently
destined to, she intemperately thought, better than any one else, but
she could herself induct him into the paths of intimacy. There was no
pleasure in feeling that he was bound to prejudge her through cognizance
of this other tie she had for the moment forgotten.

"Did Peter tell you that?" she asked.

"I'm afraid I guessed it."

His frankness put her back on their pleasant ground of intimacy; it even
brought them nearer.

"Why did you guess it?"

Here was foolish talk, she following upon the heels of his venture, as
if there were something in the very dust of his progress too precious to
be lost. But MacLeod, who cared nothing about inanities once their
purpose was served, whirled her away from further challenge and reply.

"You must come to Paris," he said; "with or without Peter, you must
come."

Her hear