“I’d cut off my head!” exploded Philip.

“Do you remember that it was only a few hours ago that I said she could never be yours in this world?” Croisset reminded him, in the same quiet voice.  “And now, when even I say there is hope, can you not make me have the confidence in you that I must have—­if we win?”

Philip’s face relaxed.  In silence he gripped Jean’s hand.

“And what I am going to tell you—­a thing which Josephine would not say if she were here, is this, M’sieur,” went on Jean.  “Before you left us alone in this room I had a doubt.  Now I have none.  The great fight is coming.  And in that fight all the spirits of Kisamunito must be with us.  You will have fighting enough.  And it will be such fighting its you will remember to the end of your days.  But until the last word is said—­until the last hour, you must be as you have been.  I repeat that.  Have you faith enough in me to believe?”

“Yes, I believe,” said Philip.  “It seems inconceivable, Jean—­but I believe.”

Jean moved to the door.

“Good-night, M’sieur,” he said.

“Good-night, Jean.”

For a few moments after Croisset had left him Philip stood motionless.  Then he locked the door.  Until he was alone he did not know what a restraint he had put upon himself.  Jean’s words, the mysterious developments of the evening, the half promise of the fulfilment of his one great hope—­had all worked him into a white heat of unrest.  He knew that he could not stay in his room, that it would be impossible for him to sleep.  And he was not in a condition to rejoin Adare and his wife.  He wanted to walk—­to find relief in physical exertion, Of a sudden his mind was made up.  He extinguished the light.  Then he reopened the window, and dropped out into the night again.

He made his way once more to the edge of the forest.  He did not stop this time, but plunged deeper into its gloom.  Moon and stars were beginning to lighten the white waste ahead of him.  He knew he could not lose himself, as he could follow his own trail back.  He paused for a moment in the shelter of a spruce to fill his pipe and light it.  Then he went on.  Now that he was alone he tried to discover some key to all that Jean had said to him.  After all, his first guess had not been so far out of the way:  it was a physical force that was Josephine’s deadliest menace.  What was this force?  How could he associate it with the baby back in Adare House?  Unconsciously his mind leaped to Thoreau, the Free Trader, as a possible solution, but in the same breath he discarded that as unreasonable.  Such a force as Thoreau and his gang would be dealt with by Adare himself, or the forest people.  There was something more.  Vainly he racked his brain for some possible enlightenment.

He walked ten minutes without noting the direction he was taking when he was brought to a standstill with a sudden shock.  Not twenty paces from him he heard voices.  He dodged behind a tree, and an instant later two figures hurried past him.  A cry rose to his lips, but he choked it back.  One of the two was Jean.  The other was Josephine!