reflect--I don't know. I truly don't
know."

"He won't go to your father and make a scene?" said Ste. Marie, and the
girl shook her head.

"I made him promise not to. Oh, Bayard," she cried--and in his
abstraction he did not notice the name she gave him--"I am afraid
myself! I am horribly afraid about my father."

"I am sure he did not know," said the man. "Stewart lied to him."

But Coira O'Hara shook her head, saying: "I didn't mean that. I'm afraid
of what will happen when he finds out how he has been--how we have been
played upon, tricked, deceived--what a light we have been placed in. You
don't know, you can't even imagine, how he has set his heart on--what he
wished to occur. I am afraid he will do something terrible when he
knows. I am afraid he will kill Captain Stewart."

"Which," observed Ste. Marie, "would be an excellent solution of the
problem. But of course we mustn't let it happen. What can be done?"

"We mustn't let him know the truth," said the girl, "until Arthur is
gone and until Captain Stewart is gone, too. He is terrible when he's
angry. We must keep the truth from him until he can do no harm. It will
be bad enough even then, for I think it will break his heart."

Ste. Marie remembered that there was something she did not know, and he
told her about his interview with Richard Hartley and about their
arrangement for the rescue--if it should be necessary--on that very
night.

She nodded her head over it, but for a long time after he had finished
she did not speak. Then she said: "I am glad, I suppose. Yes, since it
has to be done, I suppose I am glad that it is to come at once." She
looked up at Ste. Marie with shadowy, inscrutable eyes. "And so,
Monsieur," said she, "it is at an end--all this." She made a little
gesture which seemed to sweep the park and gardens. "So we go out of
each other's lives as abruptly as we entered them. Well--" She had
continued to look at him, but she saw the man's face turn white, and she
saw something come into his eyes which was like intolerable pain; then
she looked away.

Ste. Marie said her name twice, under his breath, in a sort of soundless
cry, but he said no more, and after a moment she went on:

"Even so, I am glad that at last we know each other--for what we are....
I should have been sorry to go on thinking you ... what I thought
before.... And I could not have borne it, I'm afraid, to have you think
... what you thought of me ... when I came to k