impossible she had been
so far ahead, so greatly the more confident and daring, had tempted him
to such heights, scorning every dizzy verge, that now, when she turned
quite back from their adventure, humbly confessing it too hard, she
could not understand how he should continue to set himself doggedly
toward it. Perhaps, too, she trusted unconsciously in her prerogative.
He loved her, and she him: before she would not, now she would. Before
she had preferred an ideal to the desire of her heart; now it lay about
her; her strenuous heart had pulled it down to foolish ruin, and how
should she lie abased with it and see him still erect and full of the
deed they had to do?

"Come," he said, "let me take you home, dear," and at that and some
accent in it that struck again at hope, she sank at his feet in a
torrent of weeping, clasping them and entreating him, "Oh send her away!
Send her away!"

He lifted her, and was obliged literally to support her. Her hat had
fallen off; he stroked her hair and murmured such comfort to her as we
have for children in their extremity, of which the burden is chiefly
love and "Don't cry." She grew gradually quieter, drawing one knows not
what restitution from the intrinsic in him; but there was no pride in
her, and when she said "Let me go home now," it was the broken word of
hapless defeat. They struggled together out into the boisterous street,
and once or twice she failed and had to stop and turn. Then she would
cling to a wall or a tree, putting his help aside with a gesture in
which there was again some pitiful trace of renunciation. They went
almost without a word, each treading upon the heart of the other toward
the gulf that was to come. They reached it at the Murchisons' gate, and
there they paused, as briefly as possible, since pause was torture, and
he told her what he could not tell her before.

"I have accepted the charge of the White Water Mission Station in
Alberta," he said. "I, too, learned very soon after I left you what was
possible and what was not. I go as soon as--things can be set in order
here. Good-bye, my dear love, and may God help us both."

She looked at him with a pitiful effort at a steady lip. "I must try
to believe it," she said. "And afterward, when it comes true for you,
remember this--I was ashamed."

Then he saw her pass into her father's house, and he took the road to
his duty and Dr Drummond's.

His extremity was very great. Through it lines came