She rose at last, with the truth, as Gaunt had taught it to her, full before her, that it would be crime to make compact with sin or a sinner. She went out on the porch, looking no longer to the road, but up to the uncertain sky. Poor, simple Dode! So long she had hid the thought of this man in her woman's breast, clung to it for all strength, all tenderness! It stood up now before her,--Evil. Gaunt told her to-night that to love him was to turn her back on the cross, to be traitor to that blood on Calvary. Was it? She found no answer in the deadened sky, or in her own heart. She would give him up, then? She looked up, her face slowly whitening. "I love him," she said, as one who had a right to speak to God. That was all. So, in old times, a soul from out of the darkness of His judgments faced the Almighty, secure in its own right: "Till I die I will not remove mine integrity from me." Yet Dode was a weak woman; the trial went home to the very marrow. She stood by the wooden railing, gathering the snow off of it, putting it to her hot forehead, not knowing what she did. Her brain was dull, worn-out, she thought; it ached. She wished she could sleep, with a vacant glance at the thick snow-clouds, and turning to go in. There was a sudden step on the path,--he was coming! She would see him once more,--once! God could not deny her that! her very blood leaping into hot life. "Theodora!" (He never called her the familiar "Dode," as the others did.) "Why, what ails you, child?"--in his quiet, cordial fashion, "Is this the welcome you give me? The very blood shivers in your hand! Your lips are blue!"--opening the door for her to go in, and watching her. His eye was more that of a physician than a lover, she felt, and cowered down into a chair he put before the fire for her,--sheltering her face with her hands, that he might not see how white it was, and despise her. Palmer stood beside her, looking at her quietly; she had exhausted herself by some excitement, in her old fashion; he was used to these spasms of bodily languor,--a something he pitied, but could not comprehend. It was an odd symptom of the thoroughness with which her life was welded into his, that he alone knew her as weak, hysteric, needing help at times. Gaunt or her father would have told you her nerves were as strong as a ploughman's. "Have you been in a passion, my child?" She chafed her hands, loathing herself that she could not deaden down their shiver or the stinging pain in her head. What were these things at a time like this? Her physician was taking a different diagnosis of her disease from his first. He leaned over her, his face flushing, his voice lower, hurried. "Were you disappointed? Did you watch--for me?" "I watched for you, Douglas,"--trying to rise. He took her hand and helped her up, then let it fall: he never held Dode's hand, or touched her hair, as Gaunt did. "I watched for you,--I have something to say to you,"--steadying her voice.