im
fight for them both. It was a longing to find security in the
certainty of his self-control, a desire to drift, and let him be
responsible, to let him control the irresponsibility within her,
the unwisdom, the delicate audacity, latent, mischievous, that
needed a reversal of the role of protector and protected to blossom
deliciously into the coquetry that she had never dared.

"Are you to be trusted?" she asked innocently.

"Yes, at last. You know it. Even if I----"

"Yes, dear."

She considered him with a new and burning curiosity. It was the
feminine in her, wondering, not yet certain, whether it might
safely dare.

"I suppose I've made an anchorite out of you," she ventured.

"You can judge," he said, laughing; and had her in his arms again,
and kissed her consenting lips and palms, and looked down into the
sweet eyes; and she smiled back at him, confident, at rest.

"What has wrought this celestial change in you, Phil?" she
whispered, listlessly humourous.

"What change?"

"The spiritual."

"Is there one? I seem to kiss you just as ardently."

"I know. . . . But--for the first time since I ever saw you--I
feel that I am safe in the world. . . . It may annoy me."

He laughed.

"I may grow tired of it," she insisted, watching him. "I may
behave like a naughty, perverse, ungrateful urchin, and kick and
scream and bite. . . . But you won't let me be hurt, will you?"

"No, child." His voice was laughing at her, but his eyes were
curiously grave.

She put both arms up around his neck with a quick catch of her
breath.

"I do love you--I do love you. I know it now, Phil--I know it as I
never dreamed of knowing it. . . . You will never let me be hurt,
will you? Nothing can harm me now, can it?"

"Nothing, Ailsa."

She regarded him dreamily. Sometimes her blue eyes wandered toward
the stars, sometimes toward the camp fires on the hill.

"Perfect--perfect belief in--your goodness--to me," she murmured
vaguely. "Now I shall--repay you--by perversity--misbehaviour--I
don't know what--I don't know--what----"

Her lids closed; she yielded to his embrace; one slim, detaining
hand on his shoulder held her closer, closer.

"You must--never--go away," her lips formed.

But already he was releasing her, pale but coolly master of the
situation. Acquiescent, inert, she lay in his arms, then
straightened and rested against the rail beside her.

Presently she smiled to herself, looked at