proper, perhaps,
that I should ask any favor of you, but I do. I beg you not to speak
or write to me again until I have done what must be done here, and
gone away from this place and this country forever."

There was an instant's silence, during which Comrade nestled close to
her and tried to lick her hand, all the time looking longingly at
Horace. Then a voice, constrained and low, said, sadly: "I will grant
your favor, Lady Hurdly. What of the favor I have asked of you?"

"I cannot. It is impossible," she cried. "Surely I have been
humiliated enough without that. It is the one thing you have in your
power to do for me, never to mention that subject again."

"I shall obey you," he said; "but in return I ask that you will not
forget my request of you, though you have forced me to silence. While
a wrong so gross as that goes unrepaired I can never rest. Remember
this, and that you have it in your power to relieve me of this
burden. Now I will go."

He turned and vanished through the shrubbery, Comrade after him.

Bettina sank upon the ground, covering her face with the long drapery
of her cape. Suddenly she felt a touch. Her heart leaped, and she
uncovered her head, showing the light of a great hope in her eyes.

But it was only Comrade, nestling close to her, with human-eyed
compassion. She threw her arms around him, and pressed her face
against his shaggy side.

"Did he send you to me, Comrade," she whispered, "because he knew
that I was miserable and alone?"

The gentle creature whined and wagged his tail as if in desperate
effort to reply.

"I know he did! I know he did!" she cried. "Oh, how kind and good and
unrevengeful he is! And I can never tell him the truth. I can never
tell that to any human being, Comrade, but I'll tell it to you." She
drew his head close to her lips and whispered a few words in his ear.

Then she sprang to her feet, a great light in her eyes, as she threw
her arms upward with an exultant movement, and cried, as if to some
unseen witness up above, "I have said it!"

CHAPTER XIV

After this Bettina went about her preparations for departure with a
spirit of calm and collectedness which came from the knowledge of
herself, which she had at last fully accepted. Hundreds of times in
these last few days her mother's words had come back to her: "The day
will come when you will know what you are incapable even of imagining
now--what is the one perfect love and complete union th