ly, the mysticism, the challenge, the
invitation and the doubting--ah, who shall say what there is in a
woman's eye! But I saw also what had been in her eyes each time I had
seen her since that hour. I left it so, knowing that her way would be
best.

"When we have escaped," she went on, "if ever we do escape, then this
will still be our troth, will it not, John Cowles?"

"Yes, and our marriage, when you have signed, now or any other time."

"But if you had ever signed words like these with any _other_ woman,
then it would not be our marriage nor our troth, would it, John Cowles?"

"No," I said. _And, then I felt my face grow ashy cold and pale in one
sudden breath!_

"But why do you look so sad?" she asked of me, suddenly. "Is it not well
to wait?"

"Yes, it is well to wait," I said. She was so absorbed that she did not
look at me closely at that instant.

Again she took up the charred stick in her little hand, and hesitated.
"See," she said, "I shall sign one letter of my name each week, until
all my name is written! Till that last letter we shall be engaged. After
the last letter, when I have signed it of my own free will, and clean,
and solemn--clean and solemn, John Cowles--then we will be--Oh, take me
home--take me to my father, John Cowles! This is a hard place for a girl
to be."

Suddenly she dropped her face into her hands, sobbing.

She hid her head on my breast, sore distressed now. She was glad that
she might now be more free, needing some manner of friend; but she was
still--what? Still woman! Poor Saxon I must have been had I not sworn to
love her fiercely and singly all my life. But yet--

I looked at the robe, now fallen loose upon the ground, and saw that she
had affixed one letter of her name and stopped. She smiled wanly. "Your
name would be shorter to sign a little at a time," she said; "but a girl
must have time. She must wait. And see," she said, "I have no ring. A
girl always has a ring."

This lack I could not solve, for I had none.

"Take mine," she said, removing the ring with the rose seal. "Put it on
the other finger--the--the right one."

I did so; and I kissed her. But yet--

She was weary and strained now. A pathetic droop came to the corners of
her mouth. The palm of her little hand turned up loosely, as though she
had been tired and now was resting. "We must wait," she said, as though
to herself.

But what of me that night? When I had taken my own house and bed beyond