ison, but it seems rather like it--to be so
dominated by this gentleman as not to even admit----"

"You see what it looks like," broke in Francis, turning to his wife
furiously. "Never ask me to believe you again. I don't trust you--I
never will trust you. Nobody will, if you keep on as you've begun. Go
back with him, then--you're not my slave, much as you may pretend it."

"I won't!" said Marjorie spiritedly. "I've had enough of this. I'll
stay here, if it takes ten years, till you admit that you've treated me
horribly, and misjudged me. I've played fair. I've no way of proving
it, against you two men, but I have! I'll prove it by any test you
like."

"There's only one way you can convince me that one word you've said
since you came up here was the truth," he told her, suddenly quiet and
cold. "If you stay, of your own free will, out there in the clearing;
if you take over the work that Pierre fell down on this evening, and
stay there looking after me and my men--I'll believe you. There's no
fun to doing that, just work; it stands to reason that you wouldn't do
that for any reason unless to clear yourself. If you don't want to do
that, you may go home with this gentleman; indeed, I won't let you do
anything else. Take your choice."

Marjorie looked at him for a moment as if she wanted to do something
violent to him. Then she spoke.

CHAPTER VII

"I see what you mean," she said. "I wasn't sporting in the first
place--I wouldn't live up to my bargain. That's made you more apt to
believe that I've been acting the same way ever since. You don't think
I can see _any_thing through. Well--not particularly for your
sake--more for my own, I guess--I'm going to see this through, if I die
doing it. I'll stay--and take Pierre's place, Francis."

Francis's severe young face did not change at all.

"Very well," he said.

"But you understand," she went on, "that I'm not doing this to win
anything but my own self-respect. And at the end of the three months,
of course, I shall go back to New York. And you'll let me go, and see
that I get free."

"I wouldn't do anything else for the world," said Francis in the same
unmoved voice.

"Very well, then--we understand each other." She turned to Logan, who
had sprung to his feet and tried to interfere a couple of times while
she talked. "And please remember that this arrangement does not go
beyond us three," she said. "I would prefer that no one else