She linked her arm in his as they walked into the big room, snuggling her head against his shoulder so that, leaning over, his lips were buried in one of the soft, shining coils of her hair.  And she was making plans, enumerating them on the tips of her fingers.  If he had business outside, she was going with him.  Wherever he went she was going.  There was no doubt in her mind about that.  She called his attention to a trunk that had arrived while he slept, and assured him she would be ready for outdoors by the time he had opened his chest.  She had a little blue suit she was going to wear.  And her hair?  Did it look good enough for his friends to see?  She had put it up in a hurry.

“It is beautiful, glorious,” he said.

Her face pinked under the ardency of his gaze.  She put a finger to the tip of his nose, laughing at him.  “Why, Derry, if you weren’t my brother I’d think you were my lover!  You said that as though you meant it terribly much.  Do you?”

He felt a sudden dull stab of pain, “Yes, I mean it.  It’s glorious.  And so are you, Mary Josephine, every bit of you.”

On tiptoe she gave him the warm sweetness of her lips again.  And then she ran away from him, joy and laughter in her face, and disappeared into her room.  “You must hurry or I shall beat you,” she called back to him.

XIII

In his own room, with the door closed and locked, Keith felt again that dull, strange pain that made his heart sick and the air about him difficult to breathe.

“If you weren’t my brother.”

The words beat in his brain.  They were pounding at his heart until it was smothered, laughing at him and taunting him and triumphing over him just as, many times before, the raving voices of the weird wind-devils had scourged him from out of black night and arctic storm.  Her brother!  His hand clenched until the nails bit into his flesh.  No, he hadn’t thought of that part of the fight!  And now it swept upon him in a deluge.  If he lost in the fight that was ahead of him, his life would pay the forfeit.  The law would take him, and he would hang.  And if he won—­she would be his sister forever and to the end of all time!  Just that, and no more.  His sister!  And the agony of truth gripped him that it was not as a brother that he saw the glory in her hair, the glory in her eyes and face, and the glory in her slim little, beautiful body—­but as the lover.  A merciless preordination had stacked the cards against him again.  He was Conniston, and she was Conniston’s sister.