kin to reverence.

Tony Holiday's name was seldom mentioned between the two. Perhaps they
feared that with the name of the girl they both loved there might return
also the old antagonistic forces which had already wrought too much
havoc. Both sincerely desired peace and amity and therefore the woman who
held both their hearts in her keeping was almost banished from the talk
of the sick room though she was far from forgotten by either.

So things went on. In time Dick was judged by the physician well enough
to take the long journey back to New York. Alan secured the tickets, made
all the arrangements, permitting Dick not so much as the lifting of a
finger in his own behalf. And just then came Tony Holiday's letter to
Alan telling him she was his whenever he wanted her since he had cleared
the shield forever in her eyes by what he had done for Dick. She trusted
him, knew he would not ask her to marry him unless he was quite free
morally and every other way to ask her. She wanted him, could not be
surer of his love or her own if she waited a dozen years. He meant more
to her than her work, more than her beloved freedom more even than
Holiday Hill itself although she felt that she was not so much deserting
the Hill as bringing Alan to it. The others would learn to love him too.
They must, because she loved him so much! But even if they did not she
had made her choice. She belonged to him first of all.

"But think, dear," she finished. "Think well before you take me. Don't
come to me at all unless you can come free, with nothing on your soul
that is going to prevent your being happy with me. I shall ask no
questions if you come. I trust you to decide right for us both because
you lave me in the high way as well as all the other ways."

Alan took this letter of Tony's out into the night, walked with it
through flaming valleys of hell. She was his. Of her own free will she
had given herself to him, placed him higher in her heart at last than
even her sacred Hill. And yet after all the Hill stood between them, in
the challenge she flung at him. She was his to take if he could come
free. She left the decision to him. She trusted him.

Good God! Why should he hesitate to take what she was willing to give? He
had atoned, saved his cousin's life, lived decently, honorably as he had
promised, kept faith with Tony herself when he might perhaps have won her
on baser terms than he had made himself keep to because he loved her as
sh