point, and the
flash of that point illumined life, as deity must feel to whom past and
present and future are one.

And all the while, with temples pounding like surf on rock and the roar
of the sea in my ears, I was not _thinking_, only _knowing_ that
Hortense was standing in the blue-shafted light with tremulous lips and
white face and a radiance on her brow not of this life.

Her hands ran lightly over imaginary keys. The blue flame darted and
quivered through the gloom. The hushed purr of the spring broke the
stillness in metallic tinklings. A smile flitted across the sleeper's
face. Her lips parted. The crackle of the flame seemed loud as tick
of clock in death-room.

"To get the memory of it," she said.

And there stole out of the past mocking memories of that last night in
the hunting-room, filling the cave with tuneless melodies like thoughts
creeping into thoughts or odour of flowers in dark.

But what was she saying in her sleep?

"Blind gods of chance"--the words that had haunted my delirium, then
quick-spoken snatches too low for me to hear--"no-no"--then more that
was incoherent, and she was gliding back to the cave.

She had lifted the curtain door--she was whispering--she paused as if
for answer-then with face alight, "The stars fight for us--" she said;
and she had disappeared.

The flame set the shadows flickering. The rivulet gurgled loud in the
dark. And I came from concealment as from a spirit world.

Then Hortense was no dream, and love was no phantom, and God--was what?

There I halted. The powers of darkness yet pressed too close for me to
see through to the God that was love. I only knew that He who throned
the universe was neither the fool that ignorant bigots painted, nor the
blind power, making wanton war of storm and dark and cold. For had not
the blind forces brought Hortense to me, and me to Hortense?

Consciousness was leaping from summit to summit like the forked
lightnings, and the light that burned was the light that transfigures
life for each soul.

The spell of a presence was there.

Then it came home to me what a desperate game the French doctor had
played. That sword-thrust in the dark meant death; so did the attack
on Ben Gillam's fort; and was it not Le Borgne, M. Picot's Indian ally,
who had counselled the massacre of the sleeping tribe? You must not
think that M. Picot was worse than other traders of those days! The
north is a desolate land, and tho