“I will not,” she said, pushing it from her.  “I will go to God pure.”

She heard a man’s step on the clay path outside.  Only the sentry’s.  Paul’s was heavier, more nervous.  Pen came to her to button his coat.

“To-day are we going home, Sis?”

“Yes, to-day.”

God forgive her, if for a moment she loathed the home!

“Pen, will you love me always?”—­holding him tight to her breast.  “I won’t have anybody but you.”

Pen kissed her, the kiss meaning little, and ran out to the sentry, who made a pet of him.  But what the kiss meant was all the future held for her:  she knew that.

Now came the strange change which no logician can believe in or disprove.  While she stood there, holding her hands over her eyes, trying to accept her fate, it grew too heavy and dark for her to bear.  What Helper she sought then, and how, only those who have found Him know.  I only can tell you that presently she bared her face, her nerves trembling, for the half-hour was nearly over, but with a brave, still light in her hazel eyes.  The change had come of which every soul is susceptible.  Very bitter tears may have come after that; her life was but a tawdry remnant, she might still think, for that foul lie of hers long ago; but she would take up the days cheerfully, and do God’s will with them.

There was another step:  not the sentry’s now.  She bathed her red eyes, and hastily drew her hair back plain.  Paul liked the curls falling about her throat.  She must never try to please him again.  Never!  She must bid him good-bye now.  It meant forever.  Maybe when she was dead—­He was coming:  she heard his foot on the stairs, his hand on the latch.  God help her to be a true woman!

“Grey!”

He touched the hand covering her eyes.

“It is so cold!  You mean to leave me, Grey?”

She drew back, sitting down on a camp-chest, and looked up at him.  He had not come there to tempt her by passionate evil:  she saw that.  This pain he had fought with in his soul all night, trying to see what God meant by it, had left his face subdued, earnest, sorrowful.  Perhaps since Paul Blecker left his mother’s knee he had never been so like a child as now.

“Yes, I must go.  He will not claim me.  I am glad I was spared that.  I’m going to try and do right with the rest of my life, Paul.”

Blecker said nothing, paced the floor of the room, his head sunk on his breast.

“Let us go out of this,” at last.  “I’m choked.  I think in the free air we will know what is right, better.”

She put on her hood, and they went out, the girl drawing back on the steps, lest he should offer to assist her.

“I will not touch you, Grey,” he said, gravely, “unless you give me leave.”

Somehow, as she followed him down the deserted street, she felt how puny her trouble was, after all, to his.  She had time to notice the drops of sweat wrung out on his forehead, and wish she dared to wipe them away; but he strode on in silence, forgetting even her, facing this inscrutable fate that mastered them, with a strong man’s desperation.  They came to the river, out of sight of the town.  She stopped.