"Not while my father leads the procession. He will have no other gods before him." "Tell me about your father." She turned on him a face suddenly irradiated by fun. An unexpected dimple came to light, and Osmond's pulse responded to it. "Electra," she said, "found time to propose that I should give a little talk on my father. Last night I lay awake rehearsing it. Do you want to hear it? Markham MacLeod is the chief of spoilers. He preaches the brotherhood of man, and he gets large perquisites. He deals with enormous issues. Kingdoms and principalities are under his foot because the masses are his servitors. Money is always flowing through his hands. He does not divert it, but it has, with the cheerful consent of his followers, to take him from place to place, to shed his influence, to pay his hotel bills--and he must live well, mind you. For he has to speak. He has to lead. He is a vessel of the Lord." She had talked on unhesitatingly, straight into the fire. Now, when she paused, Osmond commented involuntarily,-- "How well you speak." Then as quickly, "Does your father know you think these things?" "No," she answered. "I have not had occasion to tell him. Not yet! But about Peter." She faced round at him. "Peter is hypnotized by my father, as they all are in the beginning. He won't paint any more portraits while the spell lasts." "Then he won't get Electra." "He won't get her anyway,--not if he champions me. That's my impression." "But what does your father want him to do?" "Nothing, that I know. It isn't that he chokes people off from other channels. It's just that his yoke is heavy, for one thing, and that they can't do too much for him. Peter has taken him literally. He will sell all he has and give to the poor, and live on a crust. He'll think the chief, too, is doing it; but he'll be mistaken. The chief never denied himself so much as an oyster in his life." They sat staring at each other, in the surprise of such full speech. Osmond had a sense of communion he had never known. Peter and he had talked freely of many things in the last week, but here was a strange yet a familiar being to whom the wells of life were at once unlocked. The girl's face broke up into laughter. "Isn't it funny?" she interjected, "our talking like this?" "Yes. Why are we doing it?" He waited, with a curious excitement, for her answer. But she had gone, darting at a tangent on what, he was to find, were her graceful escapes when it was simpler to go that way. "It's very mysterious here," she said, glancing about the cabin, "very dark and strange." "Shall I throw on more wood?" "If you like. I am not cold." But he did not do it. "You don't speak like a Frenchwoman," he ventured. "I am not. You know that. I am an American." "Yes; but you have lived in France." "Always, since I was twelve. But I have known plenty of English,--Americans, too. Shall I speak to you in French?" He deprecated it, with hands outspread.