ing and knowing
before, and I don't like it. Only once it made me feel glad--when it led
me to you and Frale that terrible moment. But it wasn't a picture that
time; it was a feeling that pulled me and made me go. I would have gone
that time if I had died for it."

He took her two hands and covered them with kisses, there in the
darkness. "I told you you were my priestess of all that is good."

"But I don't want to be always seeing the shadows and foreboding. I
want to be all happy--happy--the way you are."

"I believe you are one of the blessed ones of God who have 'the gift';
but you are right to feel as you do. Your life will be more normal and
wholesome not to try to probe into the future. I'll not attempt to take
my coarser humanity into your holy places, dear."

He led her into their canvas sleeping chamber, and there she was soon
calmly slumbering at his side; but he lay long pondering and trying to
see his way out of a certain dilemma of unrest that had been creeping
into his veins and prodding him forward ever since his reestablished
health had become an assured fact. He recognized it as no more than the
proper impulse of his manhood not to stagnate and slumber in a lotus
dream, even as delicious a dream as this. Ah, it was inevitable. His
world must become her world.

Herein lay the dilemma. This unsullied, beautiful being must enter that
sordid old world, that had so pressed upon him and broken him down. This
idyl might go on for perhaps a year longer--but not for always--not for
always.

He slept at last, and dreamed that they were being driven along a dark,
cold river, wide and swift; that they had entered it where it was only a
narrow, rushing stream, sparkling and tumbling over rocks, and winding
in intricate turnings on itself; that they had laughed as they followed
it, plashing among the stones where she led him by the hand, until it
grew wider and deeper and colder, and they were lifted from their feet
and were tossed and swirled about, and she cried and clung to him, and
even as he clasped her and held her, he knew her to be slipping from
him. Then in terror he awoke, and, reaching out in the darkness, drew
her into his embrace and slept again.

CHAPTER XXII

IN WHICH DAVID TAKES LITTLE HOYLE TO CANADA

"David," said his wife next day, as he came whistling up to his cabin
from the farm below, "do you mind if I give mother a little help with
the weaving? Mattie can't do it. She's rig