y to see you once--for the last time. But after I saw you
I had to speak, and now that I have spoken it is hard to leave you, and
now that I am with you I cannot give you up to Pierre le Rouge."

She cried: "What will you have of me?"

He answered with a ring of melancholy: "Friendship? No, I can't take
those white hands--mine are so red. All I can do is to lurk about you
like a shadow--a shadow with a sting that strikes down all other men
who come near you."

She said: "For all men have told me about you, I know you could not do
that."

"Mary, I tell you there are things about me, and possibilities, about
which I don't dare to question myself."

"You have guarded me like a brother. Be one to me still; I have never
needed one so deeply!"

"A brother? Mary, if your eyes were less blue or your hair less golden
I might be; but you are too beautiful to be only that to me."

"Listen to me--"

But she stopped in the midst of her speech, because a white head loomed
beside the dim form. It was the head of a horse, with pricking ears,
which now nosed the shoulder of its master, and she saw the firelight
glimmering in the great eyes.

"Your horse," she said in a trembling voice, "loves you and trusts you."

"It is the only thing which has not feared me. When it was a colt it
came out of the herd and nosed my hand. It is the only thing which has
not fought me, as all men have done--as you are doing now, Mary."

The wind that blew up the gorge came in gusts, not any steady current,
but fitful rushes of air, and on one of these brief blasts it seemed to
Mary that she caught the sound of a voice blown to whistling murmur.
It was a vague thing of which she could not be sure, as faint as a
thought. Yet the head of the white horse disappeared, and the glimmer
of the man's face went out.

She called: "Whatever you are, wait! Let me speak!"

But no answer came, and she knew that the form was gone forever.

She cried again: "Who's there?"

"It is I," said a voice at her elbow, and she turned to look into the
dark eyes of Jacqueline.

"So he's gone?" asked Jack bitterly.

She fingered the butt of her gun.

"I thought--well, my chance at him is gone."

"But what--"

"Bah, if you knew you'd die of fear. Listen to what I have to say.
All the things I told you in the cabin were lies."

"Lies?" said Mary evenly. "No, they proved themselves."

"Be still till I've finished, because if you talk you may make m