She looked down, and was appalled. The pour of the stream that was so close carried the power of a mountain river in flood. Her body swayed. She could never get across--never in the world. The voice of her lover came, strong and comforting. “Steady, Bess. We’re all right.” His assurance went through her veins like wine. Tug was behind her. Of course, they would reach the rocks. The logs dipped almost to the water at the middle. A monster that seemed to be alive dragged at her feet. “Oh, Tug!” she cried. “Keep going. We’re almost across.” And presently they were, safe on the slanting sandstone shelf. He returned for Mandy. “I cayn’t nevah git acrost on that there rickety rack,” she moaned. “I’d bust dem poles spang in two.” Hollister was not sure himself that they would hold her weight, but he knew that before many minutes the house was going to break up. He coaxed and urged her to the attempt, and after she began the crossing he clung to the end of the bridge with all his weight. How Mandy got across none of them ever knew. She stopped twice to announce that she could not do it, but after more exhortation continued edging along. To the very moment when Betty reached a hand to her, she insisted that she was going to be drownded. Not three minutes after Tug had crossed to the rock shelf, the shell of the house shivered and collapsed. It went out with a rush, and presently was nothing but a lot of floating planks. Betty watched it go, with trembling lips. “If you hadn’t come,” she murmured. His soul went out to her in swift response. “I had to come. It wasn’t chance. That’s how it was meant to be. Why not? Why wouldn’t I be near enough to come when you needed me?” She caught his hand. “You dear boy,” she breathed. “There’s nobody like you--nobody I ever met,” he cried in a whisper, as lovers have done since Adam first wooed Eve. “Could any one have done more for me than you? Your faith rebuilt my life. If I’m ever anything, I owe it to you. And now--the greatest gift of all. Why to me? Why not to Merrick, far more worthy of you?” In her smile was the world-old wisdom Leonardo has expressed in his Mona Lisa. “Love doesn’t go by merit, does it? I wonder if Justin isn’t too worthy. He’s perfect in himself--complete. He doesn’t need me.” “God knows I need you, if that’s a reason,” he said humbly. “But it’s not fair to you.” “Was it Justin who swam through the flood to save me?” she asked softly, her face aglow. “He’s doing a much more sensible thing--building a raft to get you ashore.” “Who wants her lover to do the sensible thing?” She turned to him impulsively, warm, tender, luminous, a rapt young thing caught in a surge of generous emotion. “I’d want mine to do just what you did--come through water or through fire instantly when I needed you. I’d love you now, if I never had before.” “And if Merrick had come?”