ghts came. He put aside his
trouble, and helped her to mount her horse.

They rode along the beach slowly together. She was content to go slowly.
She looked physically too exhausted to ride fast. Even yet probably,
within her heart, the conflict was going forward that had only been well
begun in her brief solitude of the sand valley.

Caius looked at her from time to time with feelings of fierce
indignation and dejection. The indignation was against Le Maitre, the
dejection was wholly upon his own account; for he felt that his plan of
help had failed, and that where he had hoped to give strength and
comfort, he had only, in utter weakness, exacted pity. Caius had one
virtue in these days: he did not admire anything that he did, and he did
not even think much about the self he scorned. With regard to Josephine,
he felt that if her philosophy of life were true it was not for him to
presume to pity her. So vividly had she brought her conception of the
use of life before him that it was stamped upon his mind in a brief
series of pictures, clear, indelible; and the last picture was one of
which he could not think clearly, but it produced in him an idea of the
after-life which he had not before.

Then he thought again of the cloud under which Josephine was entering.
Her decision would in all probability cut down her bright, useful life
to a few short years of struggle and shame and sorrow. At last he spoke:

"But why do you think it right to sacrifice yourself to this man? It
does not seem to me right."

He knew then what clearness of thought she had, for she looked with
almost horror in her face.

"Sacrifice myself for Le Maitre! Oh no! I should have no right to do
that; but to the ideal right, to God--yes. If I withheld anything from
God, how could I win my soul?"

"But how do you know God requires this?"

"Ah! I told you before. Why will you not understand? I have prayed. I
know God has taken this thing in his own hand."

Caius said no more. Josephine's way of looking at this thing might not
be true; that was not what he was considering just then. He knew that it
was intensely true for her, would remain true for her until the event of
death proved it true or false. This was the factor in the present
problem that was the enemy to his scheme. Then, furthermore, whether it
were true or false, he knew that there was in his mind the doubt, and
that doubt would remain with him, and it would prevent him from killing
Le