come out right,
everything. And now you may send me to bed. Do you remember--"

She caught herself, biting her lip to keep back the word.

"Tell me," he urged. "Do I remember what?"

"How you used to come in at the very last and tuck me in at night,
Derry? And how we used to whisper to ourselves there in the darkness,
and at last you would kiss me good-night? It was the kiss that always
made me go to sleep."

He nodded. "Yes, I remember," he said.

He led her to the spare room, and brought in her two travel-worn bags,
and turned on the light. It was a man's room, but Mary Josephine stood
for a moment surveying it with delight.

"It's home, Derry, real home," she whispered.

He did not explain to her that it was a borrowed home and that this was
his first night in it. Such unimportant details would rest until
tomorrow. He showed her the bath and its water system and then
explained to Wallie that his sister was in the house and he would have
to bunk in the kitchen. At the last he knew what he was expected to do,
what he must do. He kissed Mary Josephine good night. He kissed her
twice. And Mary Josephine kissed him and gave him a hug the like of
which he had never experienced until this night. It sent him back to
the fire with blood that danced like a drunken man's.

He turned the lights out and for an hour sat in the dying glow of the
birch. For the first time since he had come from Miriam Kirkstone's he
had the opportunity to think, and in thinking he found his brain
crowded with cold and unemotional fact. He saw his lie in all its naked
immensity. Yet he was not sorry that he had lied. He had saved
Conniston. He had saved himself. And he had saved Conniston's sister,
to love, to fight for, to protect. It had not been a Judas lie but a
lie with his heart and his soul and all the manhood in him behind it.
To have told the truth would have made him his own executioner, it
would have betrayed the dead Englishman who had given to him his name
and all that he possessed, and it would have dragged to a pitiless
grief the heart of a girl for whom the sun still continued to shine. No
regret rose before him now. He felt no shame. All that he saw was the
fight, the tremendous fight, ahead of him, his fight to make good as
Conniston, his fight to play the game as Conniston would have him play
it. The inspiration that had come to him as he stood facing the storm
from the western mountains possessed him again. He would go t