peck the hand that tried
to feed it?'

"I need to walk with you in your garden, you see! Send me kind thoughts
from there, without waiting to write. Then, if I send you questions in
the same way, I shall feel that you hear and answer. I shall _listen_
for the answers. Tell me, first of all, do you, as a man, think another
man would ask a girl to marry him just because she was poor and without
prospects, and he was going away to face death? Of course it's true
that you can't know, but what do you think? Remember, I'm not speaking
of an ordinary man, but one almost too generous and chivalrous for
these days. Do you think such an one might have done that?"

Denin wrote back, "I think no man would have done that. You need have
no fear that you were married for any motive but love. A man--even such
a man as you describe--must have argued that a young, attractive girl
would have plenty of chances in life, at least as good as that which he
could offer. She would have no need of his protection, and he would
have no right to press it upon her, unless he gave all his love as
well."

This assurance Denin tried to send Barbara in the way she asked, as
well as by the letter which would take weeks to reach its destination.
He made of his ardent thought for her a carrier pigeon with golden
wings, which could travel swiftly as the light. Thus he rushed to her
the answers to many questions,--questions which seemed to come to him
from far off, as he walked in the garden. He could hear her voice
calling, when the wind came over the sea, from the east where England
lay.

Denin had bought the Mirador and begun his life there, with some echo
of Ernest Dowson's words in his mind:

Now will I take me to a place of peace:
Forget my heart's desire,
In solitude and prayer work out my soul's release.

But his heart's desire was with him, as it could have been nowhere
else, so vividly, flamingly with him, that there could be no thought of
finding peace. He no longer even wished for peace. He would not have
exchanged a peace pure as the crystal stillness of a mountain lake, for
the dear torture of seeing Barbara's soul laid bare. He was never in a
state calm enough to analyze his feelings. He could only feel. Yet the
strangeness of his position and hers swept over him sometimes, as with
a hot gust from the tropics. John Denin had had to die, in order to
learn that his wife adored him. The price would not have been too big,
if he alon