"Every law in the land says you are!" Treadwell flung his head back and faced her; "this is a hideous tangle, but above all--through all--you are my wife!" "I do not know, I cannot make you feel how I see it--but I am not your wife! I--I do not want to be! Why, when I saw the light in--in Marian Spaulding's eyes a little time ago as she ran to you--I seemed to know all at once--that it was not to you, Lans dear, that I wanted to run in my trouble, but to----" "Whom?" "To Sandy, dear. Sandy, up there in Lost Hollow." "Cynthia!" Was she shamming? Was she striving, ignorantly, to make escape easy for them all? Was she utterly devoid of moral sense? "Moral sense!" At that Lans Treadwell paused. The glory shining from Cynthia's eyes as she stood before him, made him shrink and drop his own. The strength and purity of the high places was upon her. She was lovely and tender, but primitively firm. The law of the cities she did not know; but the law of the secret places of the hills was hers. The law of love and Love's God. "You must take her away, Lans, dear, and be right good to her as you have been to me, big brother," the sweet voice, the unutterable tenderness and firmness more and more carried everything before them; "and let the little child have its chance--poor lil' child! And by and by--oh! a long time perhaps--when you are all mighty happy and safe, you must tell her all about it, Lans, and make her love me--a little! Tell her--it was all I could do. She will understand and be right glad." "And you--little Cyn?" The words came in a groan. "I? oh! I reckon this is what God meant me to do, Lans. For this he brought me down The Way, and now he will let me go home!" Mrs. Treadwell's step outside the door brought them both back to the poor artificial environment that bound them. "I--I cannot see her now!" Cynthia crouched before the stern, conventional tread of the approaching woman as if she were in a place she had no right to be and Lans quickly opened a door leading from the sitting-room to a bedroom through which she might escape. And as the slight figure ran from his sight he had a sickening feeling as if, wakening from a dream of mystery and enchantment, he found himself in the midst of sordid reality. The sweet purity of the hills passed with Cynthia and the actualities of his future entered with Olive Treadwell. "Lans," she asked sharply, looking about the room, "who was the woman who called here this morning? The woman Cynthia saw?" "It was--Marian Spaulding." "Good heavens! Did she talk to Cynthia?" "She--tried to--Cynthia--could not understand." "She will some day, though, Lans! Can you buy Marian off? I wouldn't have believed she was so vicious. Did she--lie?" "I rather imagine she spoke only--truth."