turn for help, and her woman heart thrilled at the words.

"You mustn't feel about it as you do, either," Frank continued. "The
time has gone by for thinking of your father's trouble as anything
except a disease--a disease which very frequently can be cured."

"Ah!" she cried, "do you think it would be possible?"

"I have known many cases. Is your father good to you?" he asked,
abruptly.

"Sick or well, with money or without, he is the kindest father in the
world. Save in one way, it is always _for_ me he thinks."

Her hand lay on the log. It was small and white, and she was very
beautiful. Frank had seldom resisted temptation. This one he did not
even try to resist, and he placed his hand over hers.

"Katrine," he said, "I am not a particularly good man, but the gods have
willed that we meet--meet in strange moods and a strange way. I am a
better man to-night than I have ever been in my life. It's the music,
maybe, or the fringed gentian, or the whippoorwills." There was
love-making in every tone of his voice. "Whatever it is, it makes me
want to help you. May I? Will you trust me?"

She turned her hand upward, as a child might have done, to clasp his,
looking him full in the eyes as she did so.

"Utterly," she said.