The association made her tremble and catch her breath. It was not all
joy--oh! far from it! The sweet common rapture of common love was not
hers. Instinctively she felt something in her own lot akin to the wilder
and more tragic aspects of this mountain land, to which she had turned
from the beginning with a daughter's yearning.

Yet the tragedy, if tragedy there were, was all from within, not from
without. Augustina--though Laura guessed her mind well enough--complained
no more. The marriage was fixed for November; the dispensation from the
Bishop had been obtained. No lover could be more ardent, more tender,
than Helbeck.

Why then this weariness--this overwhelming melancholy that seized her in
all her solitary moments? Her nature had lost its buoyancy, its old gift
for happiness.

The truth was that her will was tired out. Her whole soul thirsted to
submit, and yet could not submit. Was it the mere spell of Catholic order
and discipline, working upon her own restless and ill-ordered nature? It
had so worked, indeed, from the beginning. She could recall--with
trembling--many a strange moment in Helbeck's presence, or in the chapel,
when she had seemed to feel her whole self breaking up, dissolving in the
grip of a power that was at once her foe and the bearer of infinite
seduction. But always the will, the self, had won the victory, had
delivered a final "_No!_" into which had rushed the whole energy of her
being.

And now--if it were only possible to crush back that "No"--to beat down
this resistance which, like an alien garrison, defended, as it were, a