now.... I'm glad we
understand at last."

Ste. Marie tried to speak, but no words would come to him. He was like a
man defeated and crushed, not one on the high-road to victory. But it
may have been that the look of him was more eloquent than anything he
could have said. And it may have been that the girl saw and understood.

So the two remained there for a little while longer in silence, but at
last Coira O'Hara said:

"I must go back to the house now. There is nothing more to be done, I
suppose--nothing left now but to wait for night to come. I shall see
Arthur this afternoon and make one last appeal to him. If that fails you
must carry him off. Do you know where he sleeps? It is the room
corresponding to yours on the other side of the house--just across that
wide landing at the top of the stairs. I will manage that the front door
below shall be left unlocked. The rest you and your friends must do. If
I can make any impression upon Arthur I'll slip a note under your door
this afternoon or this evening. Perhaps, even if he decides to go, it
would be best for him to wait until night and go with the rest of you.
In any case, I'll let you know."

She spoke rapidly, as if she were in great haste to be gone, and with
averted eyes. And at the end she turned away without any word of
farewell, but Ste. Marie started after her. He cried:

"Coira! Coira!" And when she stopped, he said: "Coira, I can't let you
go like this! Are we to--simply to go our different ways like this, as
if we'd never met at all?"

"What else?" said the girl.

And there was no answer to that. Their separate ways were determined for
them--marked plain to see.

"But afterward!" he cried. "Afterward--after we have got the boy back to
his home! What then?"

"Perhaps," she said, "he will return to me." She spoke without any show
of feeling. "Perhaps he will return. If not--well, I don't know. I
expect my father and I will just go on as we've always gone. We're used
to it, you know."

After that she nodded to him and once more turned away. Her face may
have been a very little pale, but, as before, it betrayed no feeling of
any sort. So she went up under the trees to the house, and Ste. Marie
watched her with strained and burning eyes.

When, half an hour later, he followed, he came unexpectedly upon the old
Michel, who had entered the park through the little wooden door in the
wall, and was on his way round to the kitchen with sundry parcels of