And he had answered her: "I think I feel that too, garcon Carterette."

To which she had replied: "It isn't hard to forget here--not so very
hard, is it?"

She did not mean Guida, nor what he had felt for Guida, but rather the
misery of the past. He had nodded his head in reply, but had not spoken;
and she, with a quick: "A bi'tot," had taken her blanket and gone to that
portion of the rock set apart for her own. Then he had sat by the fire
thinking through the long hours of night until the sun rose. That day
Richambeau had sent his flag of truce, and the end of their stay on Perch
Rock was come.

Yes, he would marry Carterette. Yet he was not disloyal, even in memory.
What had belonged to Guida belonged to her for ever, belonged to a past
life with which henceforth he should have naught to do. What had sprung
up in his heart for Carterette belonged to the new life. In this new
land there was work to do--what might he not accomplish here? He
realised that within one life a man may still live several lives, each
loyal and honest after its kind. A fate stronger than himself had
brought him here; and here he would stay with fate. It had brought him
to Carterette, and who could tell what good and contentment might not yet
come to him, and how much to her!

That evening he went to Carterette and asked her to be his wife. She
turned pale, and, looking up into his eyes with a kind of fear, she said
brokenly:

"It's not because you feel you must? It's not because you know I love