ome to her, with a force as quiet and
compelling as her husband himself, the awful sense of the human bond.
He had told her she was free to choose; to take him or leave him as she
saw fit. But the dice were loaded. They were bound to one another now
by a far stronger power than mere law; by the power of action and
consequence, which transcends all laws.

She had guessed the truth, and rebelled against it, on that day when
Honor had unwittingly spoken the right word at the right moment, as
those who believe in Divine transmission through human agency are apt
to do. She had faced and accepted it during Eldred's absence; but had
not found courage since his return to put it into words; had, in fact,
with the revival of inspiration, thrust the knowledge aside, and
deliberately tried to forget.

Now it came back upon her, unrebuked; and while she lay thinking over
all that had passed between them, one insistent question repeated
itself in her brain, "Can I tell him? Shall I tell him before he
goes?" And after much debating, she decided on silence. In the first
place, he would be saved anxiety if he should not return in time; and
in the second place--though this consideration stood undeniably first
with her--she preferred that he, at least, should believe in the
fiction of their freedom; that nothing should weigh with him, or draw
him back to her but his unalterable need of herself. How far her
secret was her own to hide or reveal, how far she had any right to
withhold such knowledge from the man on the eve of a perilous
undertaking,--the man to whom insight told her it would mean
immeasurably much,--were questions that simply did not enter her mind.
The artist's egotism, and the woman's love of dominion, left no room
for fine-drawn scruples of the kind. Never till to-night had she
realised how the mountains claimed and held him; and in her sudden fear
of losing him, either through misadventure or through the reawakening
of the explorer in him, she lost sight of the original point at issue;
of the fact that it was her own work, not his, which had threatened to
stand between them.

An hour later she went into the study, where Lenox, his brow furrowed
into deep lines, bent over an outspread map. A glance showed her that
already in spirit he was miles away from her, planning the exploration
of passes and glaciers guessed at in former journeyings, engrossed,
mind and heard, in the possibilities ahead.

She came and