there. I know I can trust him. I'll confide in him--enough. I'll
fetch him up here tomorrow night--about this time. Oh, I'll be
careful--very careful. And he can marry us right here by the window.
Joan, will you do it? ... Somehow, whatever threatens you or me--
that'll be my salvation! ... I've suffered so. It's been burned in
my heart that YOU would never marry me. Yet you say you love me! ...
Prove it! ... MY WIFE! ... Now, girl, a word will make a man of me!"

"Yes!" And with the word she put her lips to his with all her heart
in them. She felt him tremble. Yet almost instantly he put her from
him.

"Look for me to-morrow about this time," he whispered. "Keep your
nerve. ... Good night."

That night Joan dreamed strange, weird, unremembered dreams. The
next day passed like a slow, unreal age. She ate little of what was
brought to her. For the first time she denied Kells admittance and
she only vaguely sensed his solicitations. She had no ear for the
murmur of voices in Kells's room. Even the loud and angry notes of a
quarrel between Kells and his men did not distract her.

At sunset she leaned out of the little window, and only then, with
the gold fading on the peaks and the shadow gathering under the
bluff, did she awaken to reality. A broken mass of white cloud
caught the glory of the sinking sun. She had never seen a golden
radiance like that. It faded and dulled. But a warm glow remained.
At twilight and then at dusk this glow lingered.

Then night fell. Joan was exceedingly sensitive to the sensations of