A few days were enough for Jimmie's simple arrangements; and then began the pilgrimage of these two, each bearing a burden, a heart-ache, a pain from which there was no escaping, but each bearing it with a certain splendour of courage that made life beautiful to the other. For the girl suffered keenly, as Jimmie knew. She had given a passionate heart for good and all to the handsome young fellow who had refused to bow the knee to the man whom he had every reason to consider a blackguard. They had come together, youth to youth, as naturally as two young birds in the first mating-season; but, fortunately or unfortunately for Aline, she was not a bird, but a human being of unalterable affections and indomitable character. She had the glorious faith, _quia incredibile_, in Jimmie, and rather than swerve aside from it she would have walked on knife edges all the rest of her days. So she scorned the pain, and scorned herself for feeling it when she saw the serenity with which he bore his cross. Dimly she felt that if the truth were known he would stand forth heroically, not infamously. She had revered him as a child does its father; but in that sweet and pure relationship of theirs, she had also watched him with the minute, jealous solicitude that a mother devotes to an only child who is incapable of looking after itself. Nothing in his character had escaped her. She knew both his strength and his enchanting weaknesses. To her trained eyes, he was all but transparent; and of late her quickened vision had read in letters of fire across his heart, “The desire of the moth for the star.”