te sure that this thing is your
duty?"

The man laughed in a rather grim fashion. "No," he said, "I can't. In
fact, when I sit down to think I can see at least a dozen reasons why
it doesn't concern me. In a case of this kind that's always easy.
It's just borne in upon me--I don't know how--that I have to go."

Agatha crossed to the window and sat down. She knew there was more to
follow, and it seemed advisable to secure whatever there might be in
her favour in a pose of physical ease. Besides, where she stood the
glare of light flung back by the white and dusty grass outside struck
full upon her face, and she did not want the man to read every varying
expression. He leaned upon a chair-back looking at her gravely.

"Well," he said, "we'll go on a little further. It seems better that I
should make what's in my mind quite clear to you. You see, I and
Captain Dampier start in a week."

Agatha was certainly conscious of a thrill of dismay, but the man
proceeded quietly. "We may be back before the winter, but it's also
quite likely that we may be ice-nipped before our work is through, and
in that case it would be a year at least before we reach Vancouver. In
fact, there's a certain probability that all of us may leave our bones
up there. Now, there's a thing I must ask you. Is it only a passing
trouble that stands between you and Gregory? Are you still fond of
him?"

The girl felt her heart beating unpleasantly fast. It would have been
a relief to assure herself that she was as fond of Gregory as she had
been, but she could not do it.

"That," she said, "is a point on which I cannot answer you."

"We'll let it go at that. The fact that Gregory sent me over for you
implied a certain obligation. How far events have cleared me of it I
don't know--and you don't seem willing to tell me. But I fancy there
is now less cause than there was for me to thrust my own wishes into
the background, and, as I start in another week, the situation has
forced my hand. I can't wait as I had meant to do, and it would be a
vast relief to know that I had made your future safer than it is before
I go. Will you marry me at the settlement the morning I start?"

Half-conscious, as she was, of the unselfishness which had prompted
this suggestion, Agatha turned and faced him in hot anger.

"Can you suppose for a moment that I would agree to that?" she asked.

"Wait," said the man gravely. "Try to look at it quietly. First