"It means that I have and am nothing. When I think of mother--" He looked at Katrine, with her radiant beauty, as she reached upward for an early rose. "And your friend McDermott," he went on, "has done a strange thing. This morning I opened my mail for the first time since my illness. In it I found a letter from him, saying that it could be proven that my father had never made an early marriage, and that Quantrelle was a great liar. I don't understand it. I saw Quantrelle myself, as well as his brother, when I was in France. There is not a doubt the marriage was an entirely legal one, not the shadow of a doubt. Ah," he cried, "Katrine, it seems to kill me when I think of it!" "Francis Ravenel," she cried, the old smile on her face as she came toward him and placed her hand caressingly on his cheek, "you told me once, not long ago, to ask you to marry me. I do." "Do what?" "Ask you to marry me." "And I refuse," he said, firmly. "I will not be married through pity." "Oh, very well." She seated herself on some cushions on the top step, humming softly, as though his words were of no moment whatever. "You don't think I mean it, do you?" he demanded, at length. She made no answer whatever. "Katrine," he said, at length. "Yes." "What are you thinking of?" "I've gone away," she answered. "I was not being treated very well, and so I went away. I'm over in my Dreaming Land, My Own Country." "Ah, come back to me!" he cried. "Very well," she said, obligingly, though she made no movement toward him. "I've been rebuilding the old lodge, in my thoughts, for Josef. It will be such a wonderful place for him to rest in! He will want the first floor made into one room. And Nora and I will come there in the summer-time, when we're not singing. Perhaps you will come to visit us sometime, Mr. Ravenel!" she said, politely. "Katrine, Katrine!" he pleaded. "It would be so unfair to you." "Nonsense," she returned, shortly. There was surely never anything kinder or better in the world than this belittling of the whole matter. "And I may never be strong again--" "Then I can have my own way more," she laughed. "And your voice--" "Beloved," she said, gravely, "I can never give up my singing. Don't think me vain when I say I sing too well to make it _right_ for me to give it up. I don't believe that anybody who does a thing well, who has the real gift, _can_ give it up. But that I shall never have to sing for _money_ is a great happiness for me. I can sing for the poorer folk, for the ones who really feel. Ah," she cried, "I've plans of my own, Josef and I! And the study and the pain were to teach me how unimportant all things are in this world save only love." "Katrine! Katrine!" he cried, "you must help me to be square to you!" He raised his hand, feeble from illness, in the manner of one who takes an oath. "I solemnly swear that I will never do you the _injustice_--"