"You say you have talked with Father?" A wild wave of relief tore through the girl; she tried once more to lift her eyes to the face, reading the wistful look dwelling on it, loving it, yet coming no nearer to it. Ah, there would be no more Gorgon "practical life" now. She had seen true, she had known, _known_--and with a curious effort the girl tried to look smilingly and frankly back at this man. On "Colter's" own face there was left only a trace of the old baffled sadness; new triumph tore through her, "Colter" had won out, _won out!_ As in a dream, she listened to his voice. "I hoped you and I might care for all the 'under-dogs' in the world--together." Then after another short silence: "You remember the night in the little fruit orchard? I think you cared for me then, and I," the man's voice faltered, "I adored you. You remember other times, I think," he said gently, "that you _did_ care and I wanted you to know that that was what cured me, brought things back. I didn't frighten you then, did I, Sard? You put your hand in mine, but," hesitatingly, "I seem to frighten you now; you wouldn't come to me now?" She stood pulling at the amber chain, and after a moment "Colter" also touched the chain. He followed her hand on the golden rope. It seemed to them both that something rather terrible might happen. To Sard, it was as if in this pause some wonderful gate might close, some beautiful thing might pass out, never to return. But the woman that rose up in the girl asserting with vehemence her right to this man frightened that other untried creature, the Winged Victory of freedom and innocent impulses. Things had changed! Oh, how could Sard prevent the gate from closing, the lovely thing from ending, unless she did the thing that it seemed to her she could not do? Instinctively the girl looked to him for help; but he, it seemed, either could not or would not help. No, "Colter" would not make it easy for her. "I came too suddenly," said he decisively; there was a stern note of self-condemnation. "Dear, I wasn't fair to you; I should have thought things out," stammered the man. A swift look of sorrow swept over his face. "Things aren't quite the same, are they?" He hesitated. Oh, no, they were not the same; they were not the same! The girl's heart, plunging, recognized this. It has been so easy to be tender to a baffled, helpless man, someone in trouble; it was so hard to meet this strange, glad, powerful person who attracted her like fatal fire, who, some way, had mastery of her.