amiliar figure in
white came toward them from the doorway. The doctor started at sight of
it, and Juliet grew breathless all at once.

"I thought it was you two," said Rachel. "This rising moon struck you full
just now, and I could see you plainly. I've wanted to see you both--and
this is my last chance. I am going away to-morrow."

There was an instant's silence, while Roger Barnes tried to choose which
of all the things he wanted to say to her should come first. Juliet broke
the stillness.

"Walk back up the road with us, dear," she said, "and tell us how and
where you go."

"I have but a minute to spare," said Rachel. "Let me say good-bye to you
both here----"

"No, by heaven, you shall not," burst out the doctor in a suppressed voice
of fire which startled Juliet. "You owe me ten minutes, in place of the
last letter you haven't answered. There are a score of them, you know--but
the last has to be answered somehow."

Rachel hesitated. "Very well," she said at length, "but only with Mrs.
Robeson."

"Can't you trust me?" He was angry now.

"Yes--but not myself," she answered, so low he barely caught the words. He
seized her hand.

"Then trust me for us both," he said, so instantly gentle and tender that
Juliet found it possible to say what a moment before she had thought
unwise enough: "Go with him, Ray, dear. I think it is his right."

So presently she found herself crossing her own lawn alone, while the two
who had just left her went slowly on up the road together. Her heart was
beating hard and painfully, for she loved them both, and foresaw for them
only the hardest interview of their lives.

* * * * *

At the end of half an hour Rachel Redding stood again upon her own porch,
and Roger Barnes looked up at her from the walk below with heavy eyes.

"At least," he said, "you have done what I never would have believed even
you could do--convinced me against my will that you are right. You love
him--he worships you. There is a promise of life for him in Arizona--with
you. I can't forbid the bans. But I shall always believe, what you dare
not dispute, that if I had come first--you----"

She held out her hand. "That you must not say," she said. "But there is
one thing you may say--that you are my best friend, whom I can count
on----"

"As long as there is life left in me," he answered fervently. He wrung her
hand in both his, looked long and steadily up into h