d falling in a heavy, luxurious sleep.

She drew nearer and nearer till she was kneeling beside him. His face
was warm with colour even in the night air, warmer than she had ever
seen it. One hand lay across his chest and one was thrown back over his
head with the abandon of perfect rest. All the anxiety and restlessness
which had tortured him had fled, and his manhood showed bold and serene
in the brightening dusk.

A sob almost broke from her as she gazed her fill, then slowly she
leaned over and softly pressed her lips to his--the first time that ever
in love they had been given to any man. She had the impulse to throw
her arms round him, but she mastered herself. He stirred, but he did not
wake. His lips moved as she withdrew hers.

"My darling!" he said in the quick, broken way of the dreamer.

She rose swiftly and fled away among the trees towards the house.

What he had said in his sleep--was it in reality the words of
unconsciousness, or was it subconscious knowledge?--they kept ringing in
her ears.

"My darling!" he had said when she kissed him. There was a light of joy
in her eyes now, though she felt that the words were meant for another.
Yet it was her kiss, her own kiss, which had made him say it. If--but
with happy eyes she stole to her room.

CHAPTER X. "S. O. S."

At breakfast next morning Kitty did not appear. Had it been possible
she would have fled into the far prairie and set up a lonely tabernacle
there; for with the day came a reaction from the courage possessing
her the night before and in the opal wakening of the dawn. When broad
daylight came she felt as though her bones were water and her body a
wisp of straw. She could not bear to meet Shiel Crozier's eyes, and thus
it was she had an early breakfast on the plea that she had ironing to
do. She was not, however, prepared to see Jesse Bulrush drive up with
a buggy after breakfast and take Crozier away. When she did see them at
the gate the impulse came to cry out to Crozier; what to say she did not
know, but still to cry out. The cry on her lips was that which she
had seen in the newspaper the day before, the cry of the shipwrecked
seafarers, the signal of the wireless telegraphy, "S. O. S."--the
piteous call, "Save Our Souls!" It sprang to her lips, but it got no
farther except in an unconscious whisper. On the instant she felt
so weak and shaken and lonely that she wanted to lean upon some one
stronger than herself; as she used t