Very seriously he looked up at the moon.

It was the day following his somewhat disordered and impassioned declaration.  He expected to receive his answer that evening; and he descended the mountain in a curiously uncertain and perplexed state of mind which at times bordered on a modesty painfully akin to humbleness.

Meanwhile, Duane was preparing to depart on the morrow.  And that evening he also was to have his definite answer to the letter which Kathleen had taken to Geraldine Seagrave that morning.

“Dear,” he had written, “I once told you that my weakness needed the aid of all that is best in you; that yours required the best of courage and devotion that lies in me.  It is surely so.  Together we conquer the world—­which is ourselves.

“For the little things that seem to threaten our separation do not really alarm me.  Even if I actually committed the inconsequential and casual thing that so abruptly and so deeply offended you, there remains enough soundness in me at the core to warrant your charity and repay, in a measure, your forgiveness and a renewal of your interest in my behalf.

    “Search your heart, Geraldine; question your intelligence; both will
    tell you that I am enough of a man to dare love you.  And it takes
    something of a man to dare do it.

“There is a thing that I might say which would convince you, even against the testimony of your own eyes, that never in deed or in thought have I been really disloyal to you since you gave me your heart....  Yet I must not say it....  Can you summon sufficient faith in me to accept that statement—­against the evidence of those two divine witnesses which condemn me—­your eyes?  Circumstantial evidence is no good in this case, dear.  I can say no more than that.

    “Dearest, what can compare to the disaster of losing each other?

    “I ask you to let me have the right to stand by you in your present
    distress and despondency.  What am I for if not for such moments?

“That night you were closer to the danger mark than you have ever been.  I know that my conduct—­at least your interpretation of it—­threw you, for the moment off your guarded balance; but that your attitude toward such a crisis—­your solution of such a situation—­should be a leap forward toward self-destruction—­a reckless surrender to anger and blind impulse, only makes me the more certain that we need each other now if ever.

“The silent, lonely, forlorn battle that has been going on behind the door of your room and the doors of your heart during these last few days, is more than I can well endure.  Open both doors to me; leagued we can win through!

    “Give me the right to be with you by night as well as by daylight,
    and we two shall stand together and see ’the day break and the
    shadows flee away.’”