home. Don't leave me, dear. I don't want to bind you. I just want
to be of some use to you, to help you, to be with you always. Love me
for a little, anyway. Then when you're tired of me you can go, but don't
go now."

I was dazed, but she went on.

"What does the ceremony matter? We love each other. Isn't that the real
marriage? It's more; it's an ideal. We'll both be free to go if we wish.
There will be no bonds but those of love. Is not that beautiful, two
people cleaving together for love's sake, living for each other,
sacrificing for each other, yet with no man-made law to tell them: 'This
must ye do'? Oh, stay, stay!"

Her arms were round my neck. The grey eyes were full of pleading. The
sweet lips had the old, pathetic droop. I yielded to the empery of love.

"Well," I said, "we will go on awhile, on one condition--that by-and-bye
you marry me."

"Yes, I will, I will; I promise. If you don't tire of me; if you are
sure beyond all doubt you will never regret it, then I will marry you
with the greatest joy in the world."

So it came about that I stayed.

CHAPTER VIII

In this infernal irony of an existence why do the good things of life
always come when we no longer have the same appetite to enjoy them? The
year following, in which Berna and I kept house, was not altogether a
happy one. Somehow we had both just missed something. We had suffered
too much to recover our poise very easily. We were sick, not in body,
but in mind. The thought of her terrible experience haunted her. She was
as sensitive as the petal of a delicate flower, and often would I see
her lips quiver and a look of pain come into her eyes. Then I knew of
what she was thinking. I knew, and I, too, suffered.

I tried to make her forget, yet I could not succeed; and even in my most
happy moments there was always a shadow, the shadow of Locasto; there
was always a fear, the fear of his return. Yes, it seemed at times as if
we were two unfortunates, as if our happiness had come too late, as if
our lives were irretrievably shipwrecked.

Locasto! where was he? For near a year had he been gone, somewhere in
that wild country at the Back of Beyond. Somewhere amid the wilder peaks
and valleys of the Rockies he fought his desperate battle with the Wild.
There had been sinister rumours of two lone prospectors who had perished
up in that savage country, of two bodies that lay rotting and half
buried by a landslide. I had a sudden, wild hope