of her life. It framed a
figure which had come to represent to her all that meant hope and soul
and conscience-and love. The morning after St. Jean Baptiste's day
she had awaited the opening door, but it had remained closed. Ensued
watchful hours, and then from Jo Portugais she had learned that M'sieu'
had been ill and near to death. She had been told the weird story of the
medicine-man and the ghostly voice, and, without reason, she took the
incident as a warning, and associated it with the man across the way.
She was come of a superstitious race, and she herself had heard and seen
things of which she never had been able to speak--the footsteps in the
church the night she had screwed the little cross to the door again;
the tiny round white light by the door of the church; the hood which had
vanished into the unknown. One mystery fed another. It seemed to her as
if some dreadful event were forward; and all day she kept her eyes fixed
on the tailor's door.

Dead--if M'sieu' should die! If M'sieu' should die--it needed all her
will to prevent herself from going over and taking things in her
own hands, being his nurse, his handmaid, his slave. Duty--to the
government, to her father? Her heart cried out that her duty lay where
all her life was eddying to one centre. What would the world say? She
was not concerned for that, save for him. What, then, would M'sieu' say?
That gave her pause. The Seigneur's words the day before had driven her
back upon a tide of emotions which carried her far out upon that sea
where reason and life's conventions are derelicts, where Love sails with
reckless courage down the shoreless main.

"If I could only be near him!" she kept saying to herself. "It is my
right. I would give my life, my soul for his. I was with him before when
his life was in danger. It was my hand that saved him. It was my love
that tended him. It was my soul that kept his secret. It was my faith
that spoke for him. It was my heart that ached for him. It is my heart
that aches for him now as none other in all the world can. No one on
earth could care as I care. Who could there be?" Something whispered in
her ear, "Kathleen!" The name haunted her, as the little cross had done.
Misery and anger possessed her, and she fought on with herself through
dark hours.

Thus five days had gone, until at last a wagon was brought to the door
of the tailor-shop, and M'sieu' came out, leaning on the arm of Jo
Portugais. There were sever