“Either you are mad or I am,” gasped Philip, staring into the half-breed’s tense face.  “I don’t think you are lying, Jean.  But you must be mad.  And I am mad for listening to you.  You insist on giving this murderer another chance.  You as much as say that by giving him a second opportunity to kill John Adare you are proving your loyalty to Josephine and her father.  Can that be anything but madness?”

An almost gentle smile nickered over Jean’s lips.  He looked at Philip as if marvelling that the other could not understand.

“Within an hour it will be Jean Jacques Croisset who will take up the trail,” he replied softly, and without boastfulness.  “It is I, and not the master of Adare House, who will come to the end of that trail.  And there will be no other shot after that, and no one will ever know—­but you and me.”

“You mean that you will follow and kill him—­and that John Adare must never know that an attempt has been made on his life?”

“He must never know, M’sieur.  And what happens in the forest at the end of the trail the trees will never tell.”

“And the reason for this secrecy you will not confide in me?”

“I dare not, M’sieur.”

Philip leaned across the table.

“Perhaps you will, Jean, when you know there is no longer anything between Josephine and me,” he said.  “To-night she told me everything.  I have seen the baby.  Her secret she has given to me freely—­and it has made no difference.  I love her.  Tomorrow I shall ask her to end all this make-believe, and my heart tells me that she will.  We can be married secretly.  No one will ever know.”

His face was filled with the flush of hope.  One of his hands caught Jean’s in the old grip of friendship—­of confidence.  Jean did not reply.  But his face betrayed what he did not speak.  Once or twice before Philip had seen the same look of anguish in his eyes, the tightening of the lines about the corners of his mouth.  Slowly the half-breed rose from the table and turned a little from Philip.  In a moment Philip was at his side.

“Jean!” he cried softly, “you love Josephine!”

No sign of passion was in Jean’s face as he met the other’s eyes.

“How do you mean, M’sieur?” he asked quietly.  “As a father and a brother, or as a man?”

“A man,” said Philip.

Jean smiled.  It was a smile of deep understanding, as if suddenly there had burst upon him a light which he had not seen before.

“I love her as the flowers love the sunshine, as the wood violets love the rains,” he said, touching Philip’s arm.  “And that, M’sieur, is not what you understand as the love of a man.  There is one other whom I love in another way, whose voice is the sweetest music in the world, whose heart beats with mine, whose soul leads me day and night through the forests, and who whispers to me of our sweet love in my dreams—­Iowaka, my wife!  Come, M’sieur; I will take you to her.”