going to tell him what troubled her. For an instant he
was filled with terror lest she say she could not love him after all.
Perhaps his fight with Philip had sickened her, killed her love. Tense
and fearful, he waited.

"Go on, Claire. I have noticed something."

"It isn't that I don't love you," she cried, seeing his fear in his
drawn face. "Oh, I do love you!"

He laughed with relief.

"Then speak away. Nothing else in the world can frighten me."

"I'm afraid that it will displease you."

"Not if it is something real to you."

"Well then--oh, it seems so hard to explain. I--I am finding myself
out."

"That ought to be pleasant."

"Yes, it is--yet, I don't know--you see, back there in the wilderness I
thought nothing mattered but you. It was so hard and uncertain. The
future was so far off. But now it's different. Every day I have neared
civilization I have grown less sure that our way is the right way."

"Why not? It all seems clear to me."

"But, Lawrence, are we quite fair? Are we quite right with ourselves?"

"I try to be. I certainly try to be fair to you."

"I know. That's it. You would want me to be fair to--to every one,
wouldn't you, and above all, to myself?"

"You must be that, Claire."

She did not continue at once. He waited, holding her hand very tight
between his own.

"Go on, Claire."

The deep earnestness of the faith in her that rang through his words
gave her courage.

"It is Howard and--and my vows to him."

Lawrence sat, his brows knit. She watched him.

"I see," he answered. "I see, but--"

"After all, I promised to be his wife forever, you know."

"But you don't love him now."

"No. I love you--and for your sake as well as my own I've got to
straighten things out between Howard and myself."

"I thought they were straight. He thinks you are dead."

"But I know that I'm not dead, and all my life I would know that I had
been unfair to myself as well as to him. I must go and get things right
before--before I marry you."

Her voice dropped and lingered caressingly yet with gracious reverence
over these last words, as one's does in speaking of holy things.

"I see," he said. Her tone told him more than her words.

"I think you do."

"Yes, I do. But when did you begin thinking of this?"

"When you said, 'Human beings think many things they don't and can't
do.'"

"I understand." He threw back his head.

"You see, dearest, it is that everything in our lives may