night," she said, in a low voice, "I shall not see you any
more for all these months. The winter must pass, and the spring, too. Oh,
Hilary!" and she turned to him with a quivering face and whispered
piteously: "Don't go, my dear. Don't go!"

"Say that I must go!" he insisted, and she laughed with scorn. Then the
laughter ceased and she said:

"There will be danger?"

"None," he cried.

"Yes--from sickness, and--" her voice broke in a sob--"I shall not be
near."

"I will take great care, Sylvia. Be sure of that," he answered. "Now that
I have you, I will take great care," and leaning toward her, as she sat
with her hands clasped upon her knees, he touched her hair with his lips
very tenderly.

"Oh, Hilary, what will I do? Till you come back to me! What will I do?"

"I have thought of it, Sylvia. I thought this. It might be better if, for
these months--they will not pass quickly, my dear, either for you or me.
They will be long slow months for both of us. That's the truth, my dear.
But since they must be got through, I thought it might be better if you
went back to your mother."

Sylvia shook her head.

"It would be better," he urged, with a look toward the house.

"I can't do that. Afterward, in a year's time--when we are together, I
should like very much for us both to go to her. But my mother forbade it
when I went away from Chamonix. I was not to come whining back to her,
those were her words. We parted altogether that night."

She spoke with an extreme simplicity. There was neither an appeal for
pity nor a hint of any bitterness in her voice. But the words moved
Chayne all the more on that account. He would be leaving a very lonely,
friendless girl to battle through the months of his absence by herself;
and to battle with what? He was not sure. But he had not taken so lightly
the shadow on the ceiling and the opening door.

"If only you had come with me on that first day," he cried.

"I will have to-night to look back upon, my dear," she said. "That will
be something. Oh, if I had not asked you to come back! If you had gone
away and said nothing! What would I have done then? As it is, I will know
that you are thinking of me--" and suddenly she turned to him, and held
him away from her in a spasm of fear while her eyes searched his face.
But in a moment they melted and a smile made her lips beautiful. "Oh,
yes, I can trust you," she said, and she nestled against him contentedly
like a child.

For a