arms, to kiss
the silent lips, the closed eyes. Through the dim cloud that seemed to
envelop him since that night at the factory steps, holding her from him
like bars of iron, she heard again the ringing sweetness of his voice:

"From this day forth you are mine! Mine only and against the whole
world! I have taken you and you are mine!"

False as Lucifer, but, O bon Dieu! sweet as salvation to the lost

A hundred feelings tore at her heart,--bitterness and unbearable scorn
of her own blundering, and wild protest against failure, but chief of
all was the love that drew her to this man like running water to the
sea.

Now that death was near, so near that even now it might be calling
his earnest spirit out of the darkness, she would do more--a
thousandfold!--to give him life. Only life, the gentle, strong soul of
him safe in the sturdy body!

And she had but hastened the end she had come to avert!

"Jesu mia," she prayed, from the shelter of her arms, "help! Help
Thou--Lord of Heaven, give him to be spared!"

And not once did she think of the great quest, broken by a meagre
waiting by the way; no thought crossed her mind in this crisis of the
Land of the Whispering Hills, of an old man, dreaming his dreams in the
wilderness.

Thus had love set aside like a bauble the thing for which her life
had been lived, for which she had grown and prepared herself in the
attainments of men.

She had felt the magic touch of the great mystery, and henceforth she
was captive, servant to its will, and its mandate had been service. And
here was the end--

A hand touched her shoulder, a hand infinitely soft of pressure,
infinitely gentle.

"Ma'amselle," whispered the cavalier in her ear, "one more turn of the
wheel of Fate,--and we take the plunge together. Kin are we, truly;
kin of the tribe of Daring Hearts. A lioness are you, oh, maid with the
Madonna face! No woman, but a creature of the wild, superb in courage
and unknown to fear! I saw it in your face that day in De Seviere,--the
something alien to the common race, the spark, the light; oh, I know not
what it is, save that it is Divine and yet splendidly of the earth! We
are matched in heart. Venturers both, and like true venturers we shall
take the longest trail with a laugh and our hands together,--and trust
to the Aftermath to give us largess of that love which has its beginning
in such glorious wise. Pledge me, oh, my Queen of the World!"

With a grace beyond compar