And he knew what must be.

His hands lay clenched between them.

Jean seemed to rise up before him again at the grave-sides, and from his lips he forced the words: "Then there is something more--than the baby ?" "Yes," she replied, and dropped her hands from his shoulders.

"There is that of which I warned you--something which you could not know if you lived a thousand years." He caught her to him now, so close that his breath swept her face.
"Josephine, if it was the baby alone, you would give yourself to me?
You would be my wife ?" "Yes." Strength leaped back into him, the strength that made her love him.

He freed her and stood back from the log, his face ablaze with the old fighting spirit.