his time next year, who
knows how soon? Ah? now I know the direction my thought has been
trending. Just as I know you do, so do I recognize the inevitableness
of it and the justness. But the man, Frona, the man?"

"Don't," she demurred. "Tell me of your father's fight, the last
fight, the great lone fight at Treasure City. Ten to one it was, and
well fought. Tell me."

"No, Frona. Do you realize that for the first time in our lives we
talk together seriously, as father and daughter,--for the first time?
You have had no mother to advise; no father, for I trusted the blood,
and wisely, and let you go. But there comes a time when the mother's
counsel is needed, and you, you who never knew one?"

Frona yielded, in instant recognition, and waiting, snuggled more
closely to him.

"This man, St. Vincent--how is it between you?"

"I . . . I do not know. How do you mean?"

"Remember always, Frona, that you have free choice, yours is the last
word. Still, I would like to understand. I could . . . perhaps . . .
I might be able to suggest. But nothing more. Still, a suggestion . . ."

There was something inexpressibly sacred about it, yet she found
herself tongue-tied. Instead of the one definite thing to say, a
muddle of ideas fluttered in her brain. After all, could he
understand? Was there not a difference which prevented him from
comprehending the motives which, for her, were impelling? For all her
harking back to the primitive and stout defence of its sanity and
truth, did his native philosophy give him the same code which she drew
from her acquired philosophy? Then she stood aside and regarded
herself and the queries she put, and drew apart from them, for they
breathed of treason.

"There is nothing between us, father," she spoke up resolutely. "Mr.
St. Vincent has said nothing, nothing. We are good friends, we like
each other, we are very good friends. I think that is all."

"But you like each other; you like him. Is it in the way a woman must
like a man before she can honestly share her life with him, lose
herself in him? Do you feel with Ruth, so that when the time comes you
can say, 'Thy people are my people, and thy God my God'?"

"N---o. It may be; but I cannot, dare not face it, say it or not say
it, think it or not think it--now. It is the great affirmation. When
it comes it must come, no one may know how or why, in a great white
flash, like a revelation, hiding nothing, reveali