't know how strong I am. I'm
very strong. I don't feel tired. We'll go back by moonlight. There's a
beautiful moon."

"It will be almost morning." He made a reckless gesture. "Well, it's too
late to think of that now. Come on."

He threw himself down the bank, held up his hands to catch hers, and
swung her down beside him. The sun slanted warmly along the road and
just ahead flickered the blue ripples of a lake.

Sylvie moved quickly and easily beside him, barely touching his arm with
her hand. She seemed definitely to decide to put away her childishness.
She treated him as though she had forgotten his supposed youth; she
talked straightforwardly, with a certain dignity, about her childhood,
about her amusing and pitiful experience as a third-rate little actress,
and she asked him a question now and then half diffidently, which
he answered in stumbling, careful speech, always weighed upon by his
promise, by the deception he must practice, by the dread of what must
come. Nevertheless, minute by minute, his pulse quickened. This, God be
thanked, would mean the end. The insufferable knot of circumstance,
so fantastic, so extravagantly unlivable and unreal, would break, Hugh
would tear the tangle of his making to tatters with angry hands when
they got back. His difficult trust in Pete's promise would go down under
the strain of these long and unexplained hours of Sylvie's absence in
his company. It was the last act in the extravaganza, queer and painful,
that had twisted them all out of their real shapes for the confusion of
a blind waif. This adventure that Sylvie's impatience had planned would
bring down the curtain. After all, no matter what came of it, Pete was
glad. The color warmed his face; his blue eyes deepened; he smiled
down at Sylvie beside him. For this hour she seemed to belong to him
rightfully, naturally, by her own will. He let go of his inhibitions and
resigned himself to Fate.

When, on the far shore of the lake, the low walls of the trading-station
came in sight, a double image, reflected faithfully with the strip of
sand at its door, the low, level wall of pines behind and the blue,
still sky above, Pete caught the girl's hand in his.

"Here we are, Sylvie," he said. "Keep quiet and follow my lead.
Remember, now, that I am supposed to be your husband and you my wife.
Can you play that part?"

She nodded, bending down her face so that he saw only the tip of her
small, sunburnt chin. She was hatles