he barriers were down.

"We need ask nothing!" he said softly; "and there are deeper woods to
the north, dear."

"Can you--will you--tell me about yourself before--you came here?"

The question was asked simply and it was proof, if any were needed, that
the past false position was utterly annihilated.

Gaston accepted the changed conditions with no sense of surprise. He
acknowledged her right to all that she desired.

"When I said, a time back"; he began slowly; "that they--those good
people we were talking about--would let me into their world if I--left
you"; his fingers closed firmer over her hands; "I did not tell you that
there is another reason why they would _not_ let me in. They could
overlook some things--but not others. Suppose I should tell you that I
had done a wrong that was worse, in their eyes, than almost anything
else?"

"I would not believe it!"

"But that is God's truth."

She grew a little paler, but she did not withdraw her hands.

With smarting recollection Gaston remembered how, back there in the old
life, two small hands had slipped from his at a like confession.

"I've been a weak fellow from the start, Joyce. I haven't even had the
courage to do a big, bad thing for myself. I've let them I loved, use
me. I've lost my idea of right in my depraved craving for appreciation.
That sort of sin is the worst kind. It damns one's self and makes the
one you've tried to serve, hate you."

He saw that she was trying to follow him, but could not clearly, so he
dropped all but brutal facts.

"When I stepped off the train at St. Ange, a few years back, I took the
name of Gaston, because I dared not speak my own name, and I didn't
like to go by the number that I had been known by for--five years."

"Number?" she whispered, and her frightened eyes glanced about. She was
not afraid of him, but _for_ him. Gaston saw that.

"Never fear," he reassured her; "it was all worked out. I paid that
debt, but I wanted to forget the transaction. I thought I could, up
here--but I reckoned without you!"

"Go on," she said hoarsely. The clock struck eleven, the logs fell
apart--she was in a hurry.

"You know there is an odd little couplet that used to please me when I
was--paying up. It goes like this:

Two men looked out of the prison bars,
The one saw mud, the other, the stars.

"There were a lot of us who saw stars, for all the belief to the contrary;
and even the mud-seers had their moments of