And in that moment he knew that he had not the right to take her life into his; that there were no floods deep enough to wash him clean enough to mate with this woman who had been down in the depths--and who knew. "Don’t you see I am so afraid! I could not live through it a second time. I don’t know you well. And I am afraid! Let us put it away now, and let us be friends, as we have been." "It can’t be," said Malcolm simply. "If that is your final answer, I will go away out of the Glen and never set foot in it again." "Oh, but that would be terrible! It is I who can go, for what does it matter where I live now? This is your place. These are your people. You can’t leave them. You ought to be proud that you were born here and that Achree is yours. It is a place that grows into one’s heart. I love it more than any place I have ever seen." "Then keep it, stay in it! Come to me, Vivien, and bless it and me," he said, moved to an eloquence which amazed even himself. "I make no pretensions. I have not been what a man should be. But there is nothing I would not try to be and to do for your sake." She shivered slightly, but there was wavering in her eyes. "I vowed I would never marry again. I have been often asked," she said simply. "But I have always given the same answer. It is a little harder to-day--that is all." She suffered her eyes to meet his, and the next moment his arms were round about her, and he knew that he had won. It was a strange wooing, and when Vivien crept back to the house, knowing that she had pledged herself to another venture on the sea of matrimony, her eyes had unfathomed depths in them. Yet when she went to her mother’s side she said never a word about her own story, but with a little accent of sad wonder in her voice asked, "Mother, Isla Mackinnon is going to marry Drummond of Garrion and who is going to tell Peter?" CHAPTER XXVII THE CALL Isla Mackinnon was sitting in the stone balustrade of the loggia in front of Lady Betty’s villa at Nice, reading a letter that had been written three days before in the small hours of the morning at the Lodge of Creagh in Glenogle. The sun was upon her hair and on her face, but her eyes were full of a wide and mute astonishment. Lady Betty, attending to her own voluminous correspondence at the ormolu desk which stood across the open window of the drawing-room, saw that expression and wondered at it. It was now a fortnight since Neil Drummond had left Nice, carrying Isla’s promise with him, and this was Malcolm’s first letter. It had cost him much travail, and as Isla read it through she felt its note of sincerity. "I dare say you have heard from Drummond about his visit to me the other day. I have tried to write lots of times, but I haven’t got the gift of the pen and I found it difficult to get words.