CHAPTER 36.
"Give up the trail of Pierre." And there, brought face to face with the mortal question, even her fear burned low in her, and once more she remembered the youth who would not leave her in the snow, but held her in his arms with the strange cross above them.
She said simply: "I still love him." A faint glimmer came to her through the dark and she could see deeper into the shrubbery, for now the moon stood up on the top of the great peak above them and flung a faint light into the hollow.

That glimmer she saw, but no face of a man.
And then the silence held; every second of it was more than a hundred spoken words.
Then the calm voice said: "I cannot give him up." "For the sake of God!" "God and I have been strangers for a good many years." "For my sake." "But you see, I have been lying to myself.

I told myself that I was coming merely to see you once--for the last time.

But after I saw you I had to speak, and now that I have spoken it is hard to leave you, and now that I am with you I cannot give you up to Pierre le Rouge." She cried: "What will you have of me ?" He answered with a ring of melancholy: "Friendship?
No, I can't take those white hands--mine are so red.

All I can do is to lurk about you like a shadow--a shadow with a sting that strikes down all other men who come near you." She said: "For all men have told me about you, I know you could not do that." "Mary, I tell you there are things about me, and possibilities, about which I don't dare to question myself." "You have guarded me like a brother.