For fully three minutes after the going of Ben, Tessibel stood looking at the student. He had saved her from Myra's fate, from a hated thing that made her teeth press hard together, and her eyes gather an expression of melting gratitude. "It were--it were--" But the halting tongue could not finish. Untutored as she was, Tess had read the message in the student's eyes. Love teaches in one night its dreadful longing and response. Its domineering power brought Frederick Graves nearer to Tess in her rags. It made them equal, even as all are equal in love--and in death. In an instant the girl in the fish-tainted tatters was clasped close to his heart, the bright, beautiful face lifted to his. Then came the kiss, the making of which blended two lives indissolubly together. The paleness of death settled over the boy; the strong muscles of his shoulders stood out beneath the whiteness of his shirt sleeves, while his fingers pressed the red-brown head closer to him, his kiss deepening the crimson richness in the squatter's face. It was the one supreme passionate moment of Tessibel's life. The sound of the whistling wind left her ears. The cold night blasts driving through the window were as the faint breezes of a summer's evening. The smoldering candle lifted its flame, blazing forth a glory that surrounded the student with a golden halo. Tessibel had experienced her first kiss. The nature in her demanded that she know the fullness of it--the pitying fullness which would bring to her that which it brings to all loving women dominated by the passion born within them. The blood of her race, her uneducated primeval race, rose and clamored for its own. In her untutored youth she could have crushed the lad in her wild longing for such another kiss. Pantingly she drew herself from Frederick. Why? Tess could never tell why! Myra's love for Ben Letts rushed over her overwhelmingly.... The "brat's" mother knew the sweetness of a kiss, and in it had forgotten the blasting winter winds on the ragged rocks where Ben Letts had broken her arm. Frederick, ashy-pale, struggled for control; a consciousness of the ignorance of the girl--and his own godly profession broke upon him; and he sank upon the stool with a sob. His face in his hands filled Tessibel's soul with remorse. Delicately, with the touch of a lady born, she rested her hand upon the student's dark head. The small fingers, used to the drudgery of a fisherwoman's life, lifted the damp hair from the high forehead. Her woman's sense of the fitness of things rose keenly to quiet the boy's grief over his indiscretion. "It were good of ye to remember that Daddy were gone," she whispered. "He gives me kisses on the bill." All passion had left her tones. Of course, thought the student, she was but a child--but a forlorn beautiful child born without--without what? If he could have known--