n you needed sincere and truthful friends."

"Truthful friends!" She repeated the words after him incredulously. "I
wonder if such things exist."

"I am one," he announced bluntly. "I am going to give back to you the
message your hills gave me--without flattery and without adjectives."

He came a step nearer and an unaccountable wave of attraction and fear
thrilled her--flooded her heart until her temples burned. She had been
wishing for the coming of a man who would not be clay in her hands. To
Circe all men must have been swine, from the start, save the man who
could pass by. Now, of a sudden, every wile of coquetry became a lost
art to Mary Burton. She felt like an accomplished and intriguing
diplomat, facing an adversary who has no secrets to conceal and no
interest in the evasions of others. He roused a new eagerness because
she knew intuitively that to mere fascination he would surrender no
principle. With the realization came a sense of surprise and exaltation
and timidity, and she spoke slowly with an interval between her words.

"Why--will--you--assume this role?"

"Because--" his voice was confident and inspired a responsive
confidence--"there is such a thing as a chemistry of souls. Life is a
laboratory where Destiny experiments with test-tubes and reagents.
Powerful ingredients may be mixed without result because they hold in
common no element of reaction. Other ingredients at the instant of
mingling turn violet or crimson or explode or burst into flame--because
they were meant to mingle to that end. Nature says so. Does the reason
matter?"

She asked another question, rather faintly, because she felt herself
startlingly lifted on a tide against which it was a useless thing to
struggle. Something in her wanted to sing, and something else wanted to
cry.

"I'm afraid chemistry is one of the things they didn't teach me much
about. Probably because it was useful. Can you put it in words of one
syllable?"

"Yes." He was standing close, but he bent nearer and his voice filled
and amplified the brevity of his monosyllables. "In three. I love you."

Mary Burton started back, and a low exclamation broke incoherently from
her lips.

The man caught both her hands and spoke with tense eagerness.

"You say I have met you in the dark for a few minutes. True. I have
looked on your face while one match burned out ... but I have dreamed of
you ever since I shrined you in my heart--back there--long ago by the
ro