r
little soul when she gasped in addition, "And there's father and mother
and Matt!"

Thor's expression lost some of its bewilderment because it deepened to
sternness. "But Claude means to marry you, doesn't he?"

She cried out again, with that strange effect of the words rending her.
"I don't--_know_."

He had a moment of wild fear lest his father had been right, after all.
"You don't know? Then--what's your relation to each other?"

"I don't know that, either. Claude won't tell me." She crossed her hands
on her bosom as she said, desperately, "I sometimes think he doesn't
mean anything at all."

The terror of the instant passed. "Oh yes, he does, Rosie. I'll see to
that."

"Do you mean that you'll make him marry me?"

He smiled pitifully. "There'll be no making, Rosie. You leave it to me."

He turned from her not merely because the last word had been spoken, but
through fear lest something might be breaking within himself. On
regaining the white roadway he thought he saw Jasper Fay in the shadow
of the house, but he was too deeply stricken to speak to him. He went up
the hill and farther from the village. It was not yet eight o'clock, but
time had ceased to have measurement. He went up the hill to be alone in
that solitude which was all that for the moment he could endure. He
climbed higher than the houses and the snow-covered gardens; his back
was toward the moon and the glow above the city. The prospect of
reaching the summit gave something for his strong body to strain forward
to.

The ridge, when he got to it, was treeless, wind-swept, and moon-swept.
It was a great white altar, victimless and bare. He felt devastated,
weak. It was a relief, bodily and mental, to sink to his knees--to
fall--to lie at his length. He pressed his hot face into the cool,
consoling whiteness, as a man might let himself weep on a pillow. His
arms were outstretched beyond his head. His fingers pierced beneath the
snow till they touched the tender, nestling mosses. All round him there
was silveriness and silence, and overhead the moon.

CHAPTER XIV

Descending the hill, Thor saw a light in his uncle Sim's stable, and
knew that Delia was being settled for the night. Uncle Sim still lived
in the ramshackle house to which his father--old Dr. Masterman, as
elderly people in the village called him--had taken his young wife, who
had been Miss Lucy Dawes. In this house both Sim and Archie Masterman
were born. It was the pl