“But you would not really leave me, Olaf? You could not. You could not! I and our child would follow you in your thoughts everywhere.” She knelt beside him and took his head in her hands. “I tried to run away, too. And I could not. Nor could you. Mine was so much worse than yours! I will tell you some day. Yours was nothing to me, nothing. Believe me. I think nothing of it, nothing more than if you spilled a glass of wine on my dress, or went out in the rain without your coat, or did something else foolish. Don’t think of that, Olaf! We have so much else to feel, you and I.” [Illustration: “SHE KNELT BESIDE HIM AND TOOK HIS HEAD IN HER HANDS.”] She drew his head to her. She was his mother and yearned, and yet was afraid, also. The man’s tired eyes looked into her eyes. He, too, had suffered in his male way as she had suffered. About his face there was a look, wistful and young and tender, such as it had been in the past when she had loved him passionately. She kissed his lips, thus wiping away his self-contempt. “Do you remember, Olaf?” she whispered. “Do you remember the night you carried me down the mountain, when the horse stumbled on the trail and you were afraid to trust him again? Your arms were a shield about my body. I want them now, my husband!” He saw that black night, the slipping sand and rocks beneath his feet, the precious body in his arms, the white face upturned to his. When he could go no farther safely, they had camped among the rocks under a scrawny fir. He had built a wind screen of brush against a boulder, and they had crawled within. There he had held her locked in his arms the whole night that she might rest while he watched and loved.... Other memories of their ardent years crowded this one. First she had taken the journeys with him, going to the mines, living in the camps. Then she had waited for him here at home, where he had placed her among her old friends, in this pleasant country house. He was often away, but he worked the more fiercely to get back to her. Once he had come wilfully, without warning, from British Columbia, three thousand six hundred miles, without a pause, hurled on his course by an irresistible desire to know that his joy was real, to see that she lived on the earth still and was his. He had arrived after dinner, and found her dressed to go out,--tall, white, beautiful,--more wonderful than in the camp he had dreamed she was. When she looked up and saw him,--the unexpected, welcome one,--she had given a glad cry, and lifted her arms and face to his, careless of the maid, her gown, his travel-stained self.... “I had two or three days, and I thought I would come on,” he had said, repaid already in good fact....