able she ran her
fingers with a pretty motion that he had often noticed through the
loose masses of her dark hair, where it curved behind her ears. It was
quite mechanical and showed an unconsciousness of self that Noel
wondered whether he should ever see in her again.

She poured out a glass of water and drank half of it, and then said she
was ready to begin. She looked tired, but she said she was not, and
would like to begin if he were ready.

"Sit down, Christine," he said gently, "I am not ready to begin yet. I
want to talk to you."

She looked surprised, but sank upon the lounge and he seated himself by
her side. The utter lassitude of her expression made his task seem
desperately hard to begin.

"I have something to tell you, dear Christine," he said, "but I want you
to make me a promise first. If the few poor little services I have been
able to render you, and the interest and sympathy I have tried to
express to you have done anything at all, I think they must have
convinced you that I am your true, devoted friend and that you can
trust me. Tell me this, Christine; you do trust me--don't you?"

"More than any one on earth--but that is too little," she said
hastily--"as much as I could ever have trusted any one--as much as I
trusted those who have been unworthy--and with a feeling that the
knowledge of their unworthiness could never affect a thing so high as my
faith in you."

"Thank God that it is so. And now, Christine, I call the God we both
adore and fear to witness that I will be true to your faith in me, to
the last recess of my mind, no less than to the last drop of my blood.
See, Christine, I swear it on my cross," and he drew it out, touching
the picture as he did so. "Give me your hand," he said, "and we will
hold this sacred cross between my hand and yours, and I will tell you
this thing, and you must try to feel that I am not only your knight but
also your dear brother, in whom all the confidence you have expressed
to me is strengthened by the added bond of relationship. Christine, my
sister, I want you to realize that there is an ordeal before you which
it will take all the strength that you can summon to bear with
fortitude. At first you will think it intolerable--impossible to be
borne, and I do not pretend to tell you that the blow will not be awful,
beyond words. I only want to say to you now, when you are calm enough
to listen, that it is not so hopeless and terrible as it will look at
fi