she stopped at his elbow to
watch the brilliant scene. And instantly the spirit of combat in him
stirred; his muscles tightened like those of a man on guard.

After a moment she commenced to sing very softly, in unison with the music
of the waves along the keel,

"How dear to me the hour when daylight dies."

Even subdued, her voice was beautiful. It began surely, insistently, to
undermine all that stout breastwork he had reared against her these
twenty-four hours. But he thrust his hands in his pockets and turned to
her with that upward look of probing, upbraiding eyes.

The song died. A flush rose over her face, but she met the look bravely.
"I came to explain," she said. "I thought at the beginning, when we
started on that drive through the mountains, you knew my identity.
Afterwards I tried repeatedly to tell you, but when I saw how bitterly
you--hated--me, my courage failed."

Her lip trembled over a sighing breath, and she looked, away up the
brilliant sea. Tisdale could not doubt her. His mind raced back to
incident on incident of that journey; in flashes it was all made clear to
him. Even during that supreme hour of the electrical storm had she not
tried to undeceive him? He forgave her her transgressions against him; he
forgave her so completely that, at the recollection of the one moment in
the basin, his pulses sang. Then, inside his pockets, his hands clenched,
and he scourged himself for the lapse.

"I was in desperate need," she went on quickly. "There was a debt--a debt
of honor--I wished to pay. And Mr. Foster told me you were interested in
that desert land; that you were going to look it over. He caught me by
long distance telephone the night he sailed for Alaska, to let me know.
Oh, it all sounds sordid, but if you have ever come to the ragged edge of
things--"

She stopped, with a little outward, deprecating movement of her hands, and
turned again to meet Tisdale's look. But he was still silent. "I believed
when you knew me," she went on, "you would see I am not the kind of woman
you imagined; I even hoped, for David's sake, you would forgive me. But I
did not know there was such friendship as yours in the world. I thought
only mothers loved so,--the great ones, the Hagars, the Marys. It is more
than that; it is the best and deepest of every kind of love in one. I
can't fathom it--unless--men sometimes are born with twin souls."

It was not the influence of her personality now; it was not any