der so that, leaning over, his lips were
buried in one of the soft, shining coils of her hair. And she was
making plans, enumerating them on the tips of her fingers. If he had
business outside, she was going with him. Wherever he went she was
going. There was no doubt in her mind about that. She called his
attention to a trunk that had arrived while he slept, and assured him
she would be ready for outdoors by the time he had opened his chest.
She had a little blue suit she was going to wear. And her hair? Did it
look good enough for his friends to see? She had put it up in a hurry.

"It is beautiful, glorious," he said.

Her face pinked under the ardency of his gaze. She put a finger to the
tip of his nose, laughing at him. "Why, Derry, if you weren't my
brother I'd think you were my lover! You said that as though you meant
it TERRIBLY much. Do you?"

He felt a sudden dull stab of pain, "Yes, I mean it. It's glorious. And
so are you, Mary Josephine, every bit of you."

On tiptoe she gave him the warm sweetness of her lips again. And then
she ran away from him, joy and laughter in her face, and disappeared
into her room. "You must hurry or I shall beat you," she called back to
him.

XIII

In his own room, with the door closed and locked, Keith felt again that
dull, strange pain that made his heart sick and the air about him
difficult to breathe.

"IF YOU WEREN'T MY BROTHER."

The words beat in his brain. They were pounding at his heart until it
was smothered, laughing at him and taunting him and triumphing over him
just as, many times before, the raving voices of the weird wind-devils
had scourged him from out of black night and arctic storm. HER BROTHER!
His hand clenched until the nails bit into his flesh. No, he hadn't
thought of that part of the fight! And now it swept upon him in a
deluge. If he lost in the fight that was ahead of him, his life would
pay the forfeit. The law would take him, and he would hang. And if he
won--she would be his sister forever and to the end of all time! Just
that, and no more. His SISTER! And the agony of truth gripped him that
it was not as a brother that he saw the glory in her hair, the glory in
her eyes and face, and the glory in her slim little, beautiful
body--but as the lover. A merciless preordination had stacked the cards
against him again. He was Conniston, and she was Conniston's sister.

A strong man, a man in whom blood ran red, there leaped up in him for