ife;
perhaps it was the only one which he acknowledged. _Where was he going?_
He lay with open eyes, staring at the ceiling in the faint light of the
coming dawn, with a sense of physical sickness at the thought of giving
Katrine up, of letting her go out of his life forever. He had told her
he cared more for her than he had ever thought it possible for him to
care for any one. That was long since, back in the times before he had
known the sweetness of her. Now, with all the heart he had to give, he
had learned to love her, to long for her presence; she had touched a new
chord in his nature, one which he had never known before her coming.

He would not give her up; he could not. Why should he? She would be
happier with him, even though wrongfully his, than with a drunken
father in the forests of North Carolina. They would go to Paris
together. It would be years before he would care to marry. But at the
thought Katrine's eyes came back to him. _Francis the King!_ It was so
she spoke of him, and it was this complete trust that appealed to all
the best within him, as a tenderness born of her sweetness, her complete
loyalty, raised him beyond his own selfishness, and he resolved to save
her, save her even from himself.

With this fixed thought he rose early and, breakfastless, went out into
the dawn. He would go away and leave her. He would see her once more and
tell her the truth about himself. He would make it clear to her,
"damnably clear," he said to himself, with a set chin. She would be left
with no illusions concerning him. It would help her to forget to know
him as he really was. He felt it part of his expiation to tell her the
truth.

As he rode up the pathway to the lodge he was white to the lips. His
eyes were sunken. All the passion of which he was capable longed for
this woman whom he was about to surrender, perhaps to some other. He
winced at the thought of it.

She was sitting in the old arbor and turned suddenly at the sound of
his steps, an unopened book dropping from her hands at sight of him.

"What is the matter?" she asked, anxiously, at sight of his white face.
"Are you ill?"

"Katrine!" he cried, "it is shame--shame at what I have been doing;
shame at the way I have been treating you!"

She grew suddenly pale, and her lips parted as she stood with eyes
fastened upon him, waiting for him to go on.

"I wanted you to love me," he went on. "I wanted it from the first. As
time passed I learned to