he
does not comprehend. Thinking he had won her, he threw his arms about
her and strained her fiercely to his breast. He strove to kiss away
the tears that began to fall in piteous protest; but she bent her head
as if in shame.

"Oh, please let me go!" she sobbed. "Please let me go! What have I
done that you should treat me so cruelly."

"Cruelly, Helen? How should I be cruel to you whom I hold so dear?"

Still he clasped her tightly, hardly knowing what he did in his
transport of joy at the belief that she was his.

She struggled to free herself. She shrank from this physical contact
with a strange repulsion. She felt as a timid animal must feel when
some lord of the jungle pulls it down and drags it to his lair. Bower
was kissing her cheeks, her forehead, her hair, finding a mad rapture
in the fragrance of her skin. He crushed her in a close embrace that
was almost suffocating.

"Oh, please let me go!" she wailed. "You frighten me. Let me go! How
dare you!"

She fought so wildly that he yielded to a dim sense that she was in
earnest. He relaxed his grip. With the instinct of a hunted thing, she
took a dangerous leap for safety clean across the swollen Inn. Luckily
she alighted on a broad boulder, or a sprained ankle would have been
the least penalty for that desperate means of escape.

As she stood there, with tears streaming down her face and the crimson
brand of angry terror on her brow, the dreadful knowledge that he had
lost her smote Bower like a rush of cold air from a newly opened tomb.
Between them brawled the tiny torrent. It offered no bar to an active
man; but even in his panic of sudden perception he resisted the
impulse that bade him follow.

"Helen," he pleaded, stretching forth his hands in frenzied gesture,
"why do you cast me off? I swear by all a man holds sacred that I mean
no wrong. You are dear to me as life itself. Ah, Helen, say that I may
hope! I do not even ask for your love. I shall win that by a lifetime
of devotion."

At last she found utterance. He had alarmed her greatly; but no woman
can feel it an outrage that a man should avow his longing. And she
pitied Bower with a great pity. Deep down in her heart was a suspicion
that they might have been happy together had they met sooner. She
would never have loved him,--she knew that now beyond cavil,--but if
they were married she must have striven to make life pleasant for him,
while she drifted down the smooth stream of existence f