know as well as you that this is a part of the Crew Idol. I've
known it all along, and when the time comes I'm going to give it myself
to Mr. Purdie, but not until that time."

Harry passed his hand over his face with an inarticulate sound. Then,
"You will ruin us!" he choked.

"I shall tell the truth, whatever comes," she exulted. To tell the truth
and keep on telling it--that, in her passion of relief at speaking out
at last, was all she wanted! But Harry fell back. He changed
countenance. He recovered himself.

"Look here, Flora; if you do I'm going to leave you. I'm going to leave
you to what you've chosen."

She met it steadily. "I'm glad you say so. I've been thinking for days
that it would be better so."

"Have you?" he said in a low voice, looking at her earnestly. "Of
course, I know the reason of that. I meant it to be different, but now
there's no help. I--"

With a motion too quick for her to escape he stooped and kissed her
lightly. To that moment she had pitied him, but his touch she loathed.
She thrust him away with both hands. He turned. Without speaking,
without looking at her again he walked away. She watched him with a
desperate feeling of being abandoned, of losing something powerful and
valuable. The faint, thin screech of a locomotive from a station far
down the line made him pause, and turn, and gaze under his hand in the
strong sun. So for a moment she saw him, a lowering, peering figure
moving away from her over the lawn between broad flower-beds. Then he
disappeared among the shrubbery.

This encounter, that had stopped her in full open field, had not been
the fatal thing she had feared. It had been a peril met that nerved her
to a higher courage. Now she could walk gallantly to the most uncertain
moment of her life. Between the glimmering willows down the long still
avenue she passed, her flowing draperies borne backwards as by
triumphant airs. The wind of her approach seemed to reach the two still
far in front of her.

They turned and watched her drawing nearer, and before she had quite
reached them Kerr stretched out his hand as if to help her over a last
rough place, and drew her toward him and held her beside him with his
fingers lightly clasped around her wrist. She saw that he looked pale,
worn, as he had not been last night, and, what struck her most
strangely, angry. The hand that held hers shook with the violent pulse
that was beating in it. He turned to Clara.

"Will you