d, a something that
instead of dying grew stronger the more utterly this innocent maid
yielded to him. It was as if he had ridden impulse with rough spurs in
a fierce desire to distance certain voices, and in the first mad gallop
had lost them, but now far back heard them calling again more strongly
every moment. A man's honor, if old, may travel feebly, but its pursuit
is persistent. It was the talk about his people that had raised this
damned uneasiness and indecision, he thought. Why had he ever started
it?

"The marvellous part of it all," continued the girl, "is that it will
never end. I know I shall love you always. Do you suppose I am really
different from other girls?"

"Everything is different to-night--the whole world," he declared,
impatiently. "I thought I knew myself, but suddenly I seem strange in
my own eyes."

"I've had a big handicap," she said, "but you must help me to overcome
it. I want to be like your sister."

He rose and piled more wood upon the fire. What possessed the girl? It
was as if she knew each cunning joint of his armor, as if she had
realized her peril and had set about the awakening of his conscience,
deliberately and with a cautious wisdom beyond her years. Well, she had
done it--and he swore to himself. Then he melted at the sight of her,
crouched there against the shadows, following his every movement with
her soul in her eyes, the tenderest trace of a smile upon her lips. He
vowed he was a reprobate to wrong her so; it was her white soul and her
woman's love that spoke.

When she beheld him gazing at her, she tilted her head sidewise
daintily, like a little bird.

"Oh, my! What a fierce you are all at once!"

Her smile flashed up as if illumined by the leaping blaze, and he
crossed quickly, kneeling beside her.

"Dear, wonderful girl," he said, "it is going to be my heart's work to
see that you never change and that you remain just what you are. You
can't understand what this means to me, for I, too, was blinded, but
the darkness of the night has restored my vision. Now you must go to
sleep; the hours are short and we must be going early."

He piled up a great, sweet-scented couch of springy boughs, and
fashioned her a pillow out of a bundle of smaller ones, around which he
wrapped his khaki coat; then he removed her high-laced boots, and,
taking her tiny feet, one in the palm of either hand, bowed his head
over them and kissed them with a sense of her gracious purity an