One was terrible and shadowy, and stooped lower and lower and above the scarcely breathing form; the other bright and beautiful, an angel of tenderness and mercy, and if Seaforth was fanciful there were excuses for him.

His endurance had been strained to the uttermost as day and night he kept his vigil, while the humanity of the girl who watched with him had become etherealized until her beauty was almost spiritual.

The coldness had gone out of it, and now and then it seemed to the worn-out man that a faint reflection of a light that is not kindled in this world shone through the pity in her eyes.

That spark was all that had been lacking, and Seaforth, who had doubted, bent his head in homage when it came, for it appeared to him that in sloughing off her pride and becoming wholly womanly the girl had reached out in her gentleness and compassion towards the divine.

When at last the turning had been passed, and Alice Deringham went down with her father for a brief rest to Vancouver, she took Seaforth's limitless respect and gratitude with her, though it occurred to him that she had gone somewhat suddenly as though anxious to escape from the ranch.