iven unto him forever and forever the curse of the
daughters of Achelous. And Keith, waking in the dark hour of night,
knew in his despair that it was so. For all time, even though he won
this fight he was fighting, Mary Josephine would be the unattainable. A
sister--and he loved her with the love of a man!

It was the next day after the dream that they wandered again into the
grove that sheltered Keith's old home, and again they entered it and
went through the cold and empty rooms. In one of these rooms he sought
among the titles of dusty rows of books until he came to one and opened
it. And there he found what had been in the corner of his mind when the
sun rose to give him courage after the night of his dream. The
daughters of Achelous had lost in the end. Ulysses had tricked them.
Ulysses had won. And in this day and age it was up to him, John Keith,
to win, and win he would!

Always he felt this mastering certainty of the future when alone with
Mary Josephine in the open day. With her at his side, her hand in his,
and his arm about her waist, he told himself that all life was a
lie--that there was no earth, no sun, no song or gladness in all the
world, if that world held no hope for him. It was there. It was beyond
the rim of forest. It was beyond the yellow plains, beyond the farthest
timber of the farthest prairie, beyond the foothills; in the heart of
the mountains was its abiding place. As he had dreamed of those
mountains in boyhood and youth, so now he dreamed his dreams over again
with Mary Josephine. For her he painted his pictures of them, as they
wandered mile after mile up the shore of the Saskatchewan--the little
world they would make all for themselves, how they would live, what
they would do, the mysteries they would seek out, the triumphs they
would achieve, the glory of that world--just for two. And Mary
Josephine planned and dreamed with him.

In a week they lived what might have been encompassed in a year. So it
seemed to Keith, who had known her only so long. With Mary Josephine
the view-point was different. There had been a long separation, a
separation filled with a heartbreak which she would never forget, but
it had not served to weaken the bonds between her and this loved one,
who, she thought, had always been her own. To her their comradeship was
more complete now than it ever had been, even back in the old days, for
they were alone in a land that was strange to her, and one was all that