“But if I do not sign this?” she asked at length.

“Then we are not married.”

She sighed and laid down the pen.  “Then I shall not sign it—­yet,” she said.

I caught up her hand as though I would write for her.

“No,” she said, “it shall be only our engagement, our troth between us.  This will be our way.  I have not yet been sufficiently wooed, John Cowles!”

I looked into her eyes and it seemed to me I saw there something of the same light I had seen when she was the masked coquette of the Army ball—­the yearning, the melancholy, the mysticism, the challenge, the invitation and the doubting—­ah, who shall say what there is in a woman’s eye!  But I saw also what had been in her eyes each time I had seen her since that hour.  I left it so, knowing that her way would be best.

“When we have escaped,” she went on, “if ever we do escape, then this will still be our troth, will it not, John Cowles?”

“Yes, and our marriage, when you have signed, now or any other time.”

“But if you had ever signed words like these with any other woman, then it would not be our marriage nor our troth, would it, John Cowles?”

“No,” I said. And, then I felt my face grow ashy cold and pale in one sudden breath!

“But why do you look so sad?” she asked of me, suddenly.  “Is it not well to wait?”

“Yes, it is well to wait,” I said.  She was so absorbed that she did not look at me closely at that instant.

Again she took up the charred stick in her little hand, and hesitated.  “See,” she said, “I shall sign one letter of my name each week, until all my name is written!  Till that last letter we shall be engaged.  After the last letter, when I have signed it of my own free will, and clean, and solemn—­clean and solemn, John Cowles—­then we will be—­Oh, take me home—­take me to my father, John Cowles!  This is a hard place for a girl to be.”

Suddenly she dropped her face into her hands, sobbing.

She hid her head on my breast, sore distressed now.  She was glad that she might now be more free, needing some manner of friend; but she was still—­what?  Still woman!  Poor Saxon I must have been had I not sworn to love her fiercely and singly all my life.  But yet—­

I looked at the robe, now fallen loose upon the ground, and saw that she had affixed one letter of her name and stopped.  She smiled wanly.  “Your name would be shorter to sign a little at a time,” she said; “but a girl must have time.  She must wait.  And see,” she said, “I have no ring.  A girl always has a ring.”

This lack I could not solve, for I had none.

“Take mine,” she said, removing the ring with the rose seal.  “Put it on the other finger—­the—­the right one.”

I did so; and I kissed her.  But yet—­

She was weary and strained now.  A pathetic droop came to the corners of her mouth.  The palm of her little hand turned up loosely, as though she had been tired and now was resting.  “We must wait,” she said, as though to herself.