"It's safer with you than with me," he excused himself. "Fasten it
inside your dress. It's our grub-stake into the mountains."
Mary Josephine accepted the treasure with the repressed delight of one
upon whose fair shoulders had been placed a tremendous responsibility.
There were days of both joy and pain for Keith. For even in the fullest
hours of his happiness there was a thing eating at his heart, a thing
that was eating deeper and deeper until at times it was like a
destroying flame within him. One night he dreamed; he dreamed that
Conniston came to his bedside and wakened him, and that after wakening
him he taunted him in ghoulish glee and told him that in bequeathing
him a sister he had given unto him forever and forever the curse of the
daughters of Achelous. And Keith, waking in the dark hour of night,
knew in his despair that it was so. For all time, even though he won
this fight he was fighting, Mary Josephine would be the unattainable. A
sister--and he loved her with the love of a man!
It was the next day after the dream that they wandered again into the
grove that sheltered Keith's old home, and again they entered it and
went through the cold and empty rooms.
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