"What is the--" she began, but the look in his eyes stopped her tongue and held her gaze, while she felt her breath come hard and her heart beat like a triphammer. For an instant there was silence. Then Marguerite heard in a whisper so soft that it barely reached her ears, "I love you! I love you!" It was the loosing of the floods, and at once their arms were about each other. But in a second he remembered that she was to be another man's wife, and the thought came over him like the drawing down of the black cap over the head of a condemned man. With a fierce girding of his will he put both his hands upon her shoulders and drew back. "I forgot! Forgive me!" The words came in a groan from his lips. "I forgot you're going to be his wife!" "Whose?" said Marguerite, stepping back. For the instant she had forgotten there was any other man in the world. "Why, Wellesly's!" "Indeed, I am not!" That one second in Mead's embrace had settled Marguerite's long-vexed problem, and she felt her mind grow full of sudden wonder that it had ever troubled her. "He wanted me to marry him, but I'm not going to do it!" Again their arms were about each other, their lips met, and her head was pillowed on his shoulder. Then he remembered the fate that was hanging over him, and he said bitterly: "I've no right to ask you to be my wife, for in another week I'll probably be convicted of murder and sentenced to be hung, or sent to the penitentiary for life." From the yard came the sound of Pierre Delarue's voice speaking to the crowd. She took Mead's hands in hers and swung a little away from him, looking into his face. "I know that you didn't kill Will Whittaker!" "How do you know it?" he answered, looking at her in loving surprise. "Because he was shot in the back!" She felt herself swept into the sudden storm of a masterful embrace, and with soft laughter yielded to his rapturous caresses. "And all this time," came to her ear in a whisper, "I've cared about it only because I thought you would believe me guilty even if I was cleared! "But I've no proof of my innocence," he added presently, "and I can't ask your father's consent, or allow your name to be mentioned with mine in the town's gossip until my own is clear. I've no right even to ask you for another kiss until--" She closed his lips with the kiss he would not ask for, and said: "I would just as lief go out there now and say to all that crowd that I love you and know that you are innocent--"