MacLeod kept his thoughtful way on to Electra's gate. There he turned in with no lack of decision, and walked up to her door. She had seen him, and came forward from the shaded sitting-room. It was as if she had been expecting him. Whether she had acknowledged it to herself or not, it was true that Electra had never felt so strong a desire for the right companionship as at that moment. As soon as she saw him and he had put out his hand to her, she felt quieted and blessed. He was, as he had been from the first, the completion of her mood. As he looked at her, MacLeod, little as he knew her face, noted the change in it. She seemed greatly excited and yet haggard, as if this disturbance were nothing to what had preceded it. And her bright eyes fed upon him with a personal appeal to which he was well used: that of the lower vitality involuntarily demanding the support of his own magnetic treasury. "You are tired," he said, as she drew her hand away and they sat down. "No," returned Electra. "I am not tired." "Tell me what has done it!" The tender disregard of her denial broke down reserve. She looked at him eloquently. It seemed to her that he had a right to know. She answered faintly,-- "I have been through such scenes." "Scenes? With whom?" "Your daughter has told me"--She hesitated for a moment, and then, still confident that his worship of the truth must be as exalted as her own, ended with unstinted candor, "She says she was not my brother's wife." Electra was looking at him, and it appeared to her now as if, in a bewildering way, his gaze absorbed hers. It was very strange, how he seemed to draw the intelligence of the eye into his and hold it unresisting. She hardly knew how he looked, whether surprised or sympathetic, or whether he was moved at all. But she was conscious of being gripped by some communion in which she acquiesced. After a moment he leaned forward and took her hand. "Will you promise me something?" he asked. "Anything!" The quickness of the answer was as eloquent as its force. "Promise me that this thing--this subject--shall never come between you and me." "Gladly." "We won't talk of it." "No." "We won't ask each other how it seems to us." "No." "There!" He released her hand, and seemed also to free her, in some subtle way. He was smiling at her, and she felt a keen gladness, like a child who is told he has been good. "Then we can be friends," he said, with a spontaneous relief, it seemed to her, like her own. "The best of friends." "Yes. The best of friends." Electra felt rich. Her heart swelled, as now she reflected that here was one who understood her. She had that warm consciousness common to all MacLeod's partisans, that his world and hers were alike. Each was mysteriously prevented by other people from enjoying the full freedom of that world, because each had been, until now, uncompanioned. But they had met at last. The path was plain. All sorts of gates were opening to them.