rim and a single militant
feather, which she wore that evening. The light feather boa around her
neck on account of the cool night air seemed particularly becoming. He
was near, very near, her, so near that their elbows touched; but the
nearness was like that of a picture out of a frame which has come to life
and may step back into cold canvas at any moment. Oh, it was hard, in the
might of his love for her, not to forget everything else and cry out
another declaration, as he had from the canyon! But her face was very
still. She was waiting for him to begin, while her fingers were playing
nervously with the tip of her boa.

"I must be frank, very frank," he said.

"Yes, Jack, or why speak at all?"

"From the night of my arrival in Little Rivers, when the Doge at once
recognized who I was without telling me, I saw that, under his politeness
and his kindness, he was hostile to my presence in Little Rivers."

"Yes, I think that in a way he was," she answered.

"I was conscious that something out of the past was between him and me,
and that it included you in a subtle influence that nothing could change.
And this afternoon, while you were at the house and my father came to the
drawing-room door, I could not help noticing how the Doge was overcome.
You noticed it, too?"

"Yes, I never saw my father in such anger before. It seemed to me that
he could have struck down that man in the doorway!" There was a
perceptible shudder, but she did not look up, her glance remaining level
with the flags.

"And on the pass you said, 'It's not in the blood!'" he continued. "Yes,
almost in terror you said it, as if it spelled an impassable gulf between
us. Why? why? Mary, haven't I a right to know?"

As he broke off passionately with this appeal, which was as the focus of
all the fears that had tormented him, they were immediately under the
light of a street lamp. She turned her head toward him resolutely, in the
mustering of her forces for an ordeal. Her face was pale, but there was
an effort at the old smile of comradeship.

"Yes, as I said, the little light that I have is yours, Jack," she began.
"But there is not much. It is, perhaps, more what I feel than what I
know that has influenced me. All that my father has ever said about you
and your father and your relations to us was the night after I returned
from the pass ahead of you, when you had descended into the canyon to
frighten me with the risk you were taking."

"I did n