o the
servants. Pretend you're my guest. Let me take you back to St. Jacques
tonight, after you see her. Don't stay with her more than half an hour."

She was absolutely frightened out of her wits at this terrific
denouement.

Eugene sat grimly congratulating himself as they jogged on in the
moonlight. He actually squeezed her arm cheerfully and told her not to
be so despairing--that all would come out all right. They would talk to
Suzanne. He would see what she would have to say.

"You stay here," she said, as they reached a little wooded knoll in a
bend of the road--a high spot commanding a vast stretch of territory now
lit by a glistening northern moon. "I'll go right inside and get her. I
don't know whether she's there, but if she isn't, she's over at the
caretaker's, and we'll go over there. I don't want the servants to see
you meet her. Please don't be demonstrative. Oh, be careful!"

Eugene smiled. How excited she was! How pointless, after all her
threats! So this was victory. What a fight he had made! Here he was
outside this beautiful lodge, the lights of which he could see gleaming
like yellow gold through the silvery shadows. The air was full of field
fragrances. You could smell the dewy earth, soon to be hard and covered
deep in snow. There was still a bird's voice here and there and faint
stirrings of the wind in the leaves. "On such a night," came back
Shakespeare's lines. How fitting that Suzanne should come to him under
such conditions! Oh, the wonder of this romance--the beauty of it! From
the very beginning it had been set about with perfections of scenery and
material environment. Obviously, nature had intended this as the
crowning event of his life. Life recognized him as a genius--the fates
it was heaping posies in his lap, laying a crown of victory upon his
brow.

He waited while Mrs. Dale went to the lodge, and then after a time, true
enough, there appeared in the distance the swinging, buoyant, girlish
form of Suzanne. She was plump, healthful, vigorous. He could detect her
in the shadows under the trees and behind her a little way Mrs. Dale.
Suzanne came eagerly on--youthful, buoyant, dancing, determined,
beautiful. Her skirts were swinging about her body in ripples as she
strode. She looked all Eugene had ever thought her. Hebe--a young Diana,
a Venus at nineteen. Her lips were parted in a welcoming smile as she
drew near and her eyes were as placid as those dull opals which still
burn wi