"What!" exclaimed Hamil, astonished.

"Yes, indeed. All these years of peace they consider only as an armed truce. They are proud, reticent, sensitive, suspicious people; and there are few cases on record where any such thing as friendship has existed between a Seminole and a white man. This is a genuine case; Coacochee is really devoted to dad."

The guides and the wagon had now arrived; camp was already in the confusion and bustle of unloading equipage and supplies; picket lines were established, water-jars buried, blankets spread, guns, ammunition, rods, and saddles ranged in their proper places.

Carter unsheathed his heavy cane-knife and cut palmetto fans for rethatching where required; Eudo Stent looked after the horses; Bulow's axe rang among the fragrant red cedars; the Indian squatted gravely before a characteristic Seminole fire built of logs, radiating like the spokes of a cart-wheel from the centre which was a hub of glowing coals. And whenever it was necessary he simply shoved the burning log-ends toward the centre where kettles were already boiling and sweet potatoes lay amid the white ashes, and a dozen wild ducks, split and skewered and basted with pork, were exhaling a matchless fragrance.

Table-legs, bench-legs, and the bases of all culinary furniture, like the body of the camp, were made out of palmetto logs driven into the ground to support cedar planks for the tops.

And it was seated at one of these tables, under the giant oaks, pines, and palmettos, that Shiela and Hamil ate their first camp-repast together, with Gray and his father opposite.

Never had he tasted such a heavenly banquet, never had he dreamed of such delicacies. Eudo Stent brought panfuls of fried bass, still sizzling under the crisp bacon; and great panniers woven of green palmetto, piled high with smoking sweet potatoes all dusty from the ashes; and pots of coffee and tea, steaming and aromatic.

Then came broiled mallard duck, still crackling from the coals, and coonti bread, and a cold salad of palm cabbage, nut-flavored, delectable. Then in the thermos-jugs were spring water and a light German vintage to mix with it. And after everything, fresh oranges in a nest of Spanish moss.

Red sunlight struck through the forest, bronzing bark and foliage; sombre patches of shade passed and repassed across the table—the shadows of black vultures soaring low above the camp smoke. The waters of the lake burned gold.

As yet the approach of sunset had not stirred the water-fowl to restlessness; dark streaks on the lake gleamed white at moments as some string of swimming ducks turned and the light glinted on throat and breast. Herons stood in the shallows; a bittern, squawking, rose from the saw-grass, circled, and pitched downward again.



"This is a peaceful place," said Cardross, narrowing eyes watching the lake through the haze of his pipe. "I almost hate to disturb it with a gun-shot; but if we stay here we've got to eat." And, turning toward the guides' table where they lounged over their after-dinner pipes: "Coacochee, my little daughter has never shot a wild turkey. Do you think she had better try this evening or go after the big duck?"

"Pen-ni-chah," said the Seminole quietly.

"He says, 'turkey-gobbler,'" whispered Shiela to Hamil; "'pen-nit-kee' is the word for hen turkey. Oh, I hope I have a chance. You'll pair with me, won't you?"

"Of course."

Cardross, listening, smiled. "Is it yelping or roosting, Little Tiger?"

"Roost um pen-ni-chah, aw-tee-tus-chee. I-hoo-es-chay."

"He says that we can roost them by and by and that we ought to start now," whispered the girl, slightly excited. "Dad, Mr. Hamil has never shot a wild turkey—"

"Neither have I," observed her father humourously.

"Oh, I forgot! Well, then—why can't we all—"

"Not much! No sitting in swamps for me, but a good, clean, and easy boat in the saw-grass. Gray, are you going after ducks with me or are you going to sit with one hopeful girl, one credulous white man, and one determined red man on a shell heap in a bog and yawn till moonrise? Ducks? Sure! Well, then, we'd better be about it, my son."

The guides rose laughing, and went about their duties, Carter and Bulow to clean up camp, Eudo Stent with Cardross, senior and junior, carrying guns and shell cases down to the landing where the boats lay; and Shiela and Hamil to mount the two fresh led-horses and follow the Seminole into the forest.

"Shame on your laziness, dad!" said Shiela, as Cardross looked after her in pretended pity; "anybody can shoot ducks from a boat, but it takes real hunters to stalk turkeys! I suppose Eudo loads for you and Gray pulls the triggers!"

"The turkey you get will be a water-turkey," observed Cardross; "or a fragrant buzzard. Hamil, I'm sorry for you. I've tried that sort of thing myself when younger. I'm still turkeyless but wiser."

"You'd better bring Eudo and let us help you to retrieve yourself!" called back Shiela.

But he refused scornfully, and she waved them adieu; then, settling in her stirrups, turned smilingly to Hamil who brought his horse alongside.

"Dad is probably right; there's not much chance for us this way. But if there is a chance Little Tiger will see that we get it. Anyway, you can try the ducks in the morning. You don't mind, do you?"

He tried to be prudent in his reply.



CHAPTER XII

THE ALLIED FORCES

Through the glades the sun poured like a red searchlight, and they advanced in the wake of their own enormous shadows lengthening grotesquely with every stride. Tree trunks and underbrush seemed afire in the kindling glory; the stream ran molten.

Then of a sudden the red radiance died out; the forest turned ashy; the sun had set; and on the wings of silence already the swift southern dusk was settling over lake and forest. A far and pallid star came out in the west; a cat-owl howled.

At the edge of an evil-looking cypress "branch" they dismounted, drew gun from saddle-boot, and loaded in silence while the Indian tethered the horses.

Then through the thickening twilight they followed the Seminole in file, Hamil bringing up the rear.

Little Tiger had left turban, plume, and leggings in camp; the scalp-lock bobbed on his head, bronzed feet and legs were bare; and, noiseless as a cypress shadow in the moonlight, he seemed part of it all, harmonious as a wild thing in its protective tints.

A narrow tongue of dry land scarcely three inches above the swamp level was the trail they followed. All around tall cypress trees, strangely buttressed at the base, rose pillar-like into obscurity as though supporting the canopy of dusk. The goblin howling of the big cat-owl pulsated through the silence; strange gleams and flashes stirred the surface of the bog. Once, close ahead, a great white bird, winged like an angel, rose in spectral silence through the twilight.

"Did you see!" she breathed, partly turning her head.

"Good heavens, yes! What was it; the archangel Michael?"

"Only a snowy heron."

The Seminole had halted and laid his hand flat on the dead leaves under a gigantic water-oak.

"A-po-kes-chay," he whispered; and Shiela translated close to Hamil's ear: "He says that we must all sit down here—" A sudden crackle in the darkness stilled her voice.

"Im-po-kit-chkaw?" she asked. "Did you hear that? No-ka-tee; what is it?"

"Deer walk," nodded the Seminole; "sun gone down; moon come. Bimeby roost um turkey. Li-kus-chay! No sound."

Shiela settled quietly on the poncho among the dead leaves, resting her back against the huge tree trunk. Hamil warily sank into position beside her; the Indian stood for a while, head raised, apparently gazing at the tree-tops, then, walking noiselessly forward a dozen yards, squatted.

Shiela opened the conversation presently by whispering that they must not speak.

And the conversation continued, fitfully in ghostly whispers, lips scarcely stirring close to one another's ears.

As for the swamp, it was less reticent, and began to wake up all around them in the darkness. Strange creaks and quacks and croaks broke out, sudden snappings of twigs, a scurry among dead leaves, a splash in the water, the far whir of wings. There were no insect noises, no resonant voices of bull-frogs; weird squeaks arose at intervals, the murmuring complaint of water-fowl, guttural quack of duck and bittern—a vague stirring everywhere of wild things settling to rest or awaking. There were things moving in the unseen ooze, too, leaving sudden sinuous trails in the dim but growing lustre that whitened above the trees—probably turtles, perhaps snakes.

She leaned almost imperceptibly toward him, and he moved his shoulder close to hers.

"You are not nervous, Shiela?"

"Indeed I am."

"Why on earth did you come?"

"I don't know. The idea of snakes in darkness always worries me.... Once, waking in camp, reaching out through the darkness for the water-bottle, I laid my hand on an exceedingly chilly snake. It was a harmless one, but I nearly died.... And here I am back again. Believe me, no burnt child ever dreaded the fire enough to keep away from it. I'm a coward, but not enough of a one to practise prudence."

He laughed silently. "You brave little thing! Every moment I am learning more and more how adorable you are—"

"Do men adore folly?"

"Your kind of folly. Are you cold?"

"No; only foolish. There's some sort of live creature moving rather close to me—hush! Don't you hear it?"

But whatever it was it went its uncanny way in darkness and left them listening, her small hand remaining loosely in his.

"What on earth is the matter now, Shiela?" he whispered, feeling her trembling.

"Nothing. They say a snake won't strike you if you hold your breath. Its nonsense, but I was trying it.... What is that ring I feel on your hand?"

"A signet; my father's." He removed it from his little finger, tried it on all of hers.

"Is it too large?"

"It's a little loose.... You don't wish me to wear it, do you?... Your father's? I'd rather not.... Do you really wish it? Well, then—for a day—if you ask me."

Her ringed hand settled unconsciously into his again; she leaned back against the tree, and he rested his head beside hers.

"Are you afraid of wood-ticks, Mr. Hamil? I am, horribly. We're inviting all kinds of disaster—but isn't it delicious! Look at that whitish light above the trees. When the moon outlines the roosting-tree we'll know whether our labour is lost. But I wouldn't have missed it for all the mallard on Ruffle Lake. Would you? Are you contented?"

"Where you are is contentment, Shiela."

"How nice of you! But there is always that sweet, old-fashioned, boyish streak in you which shows true colour when I test you. Do you know, at times, you seem absurdly young to me."

"That's a pleasant thing to say."

Their shoulders were in contact; she was laughing without a sound.

"At times," she said, "you are almost what young girls call cunning!"

"By heavens!" he began indignantly, but she stilled his jerk of resentment with a quick pressure.

"Lie still! For goodness' sake don't make the leaves rustle, silly! If there's a flock of turkeys in any of those cypress tops, you may be sure that every separate bird is now looking straight in our direction.... I won't torment you any more; I dare not. Little Tiger turned around; did you notice? He'd probably like to scalp us both."

But the Indian had resumed his motionless study of the darkness, squatted on his haunches as immobile as a dead stump.

Hamil whispered: "Such a chance to make love to you! You dare not move. And you deserve it for tormenting me."

"If you did such a thing—"

"Yes?"

"Such a thing as that—"

"Yes?"

"But you wouldn't."

"Why, Shiela, I'm doing it every minute of my life!"

"Now?"

"Of course. It goes on always. I couldn't prevent it any more than I could stop my pulses. It just continues with every heart-beat, every breath, every word, every silence—"

"Mr. Hamil!"

"Yes?"

"That does sound like it—a little; and you must stop!"

"Of course I'll stop saying things, but that doesn't stop with my silence. It simply goes on and on increasing every—"

"Try silence," she said.

Motionless, shoulder to shoulder, the pulsing moments passed. Every muscle tense, she sat there for a while, fearful that he could hear her heart beating. Her palm, doubled in his, seemed to burn. Then little by little a subtle relaxation stole over her; dreamy-eyed she sank back and looked into the darkness. A sense of delicious well-being possessed her, enmeshing thought in hazy lethargy, quieting pulse and mind.

Through it she heard his voice faintly; her own seemed unreal when she answered.

He said: "Speaking of love; there is only one thing possible for me, Shiela—to go on loving you. I can't kill hope, though there seems to be none. But there's no use in saying so to myself for it is one of those things no man believes. He may grow tired of hoping, and, saying there is none, live on. But neither he nor Fate can destroy hope any more than he can annihilate his soul. He may change in his heart. That he cannot control. When love goes no man can stay its going."

"Do you think yours will go?"

"No. That is a lover's answer."

"What is a sane man's answer?"

"Ask some sane man, Shiela."

"I would rather believe you."

"Does it make you happy?"

"Yes."

"You wish me to love you?"

"Yes."

"You would love me—a little—if you could?"

She closed her eyes.

"Would you?" he asked again.

"Yes."

"But you cannot."

She said, dreamily: "I don't know. That is a dreadful answer to make. But I don't know what is in me. I don't know what I am capable of doing. I wish I knew; I wish I could tell you."

"Do you know what I think, Shiela?"

"What?"

"It's curious—but since I have known you—and about your birth—the idea took shape and persisted—that—that—"

"What?" she asked.

"That, partly perhaps because of your physical beauty, and because of your mind and its intelligence and generosity, you embodied something of that type which this nation is developing."

"That is curious," she said softly.

"Yes; but you give me that impression, as though in you were the lovely justification of these generations of welding together alien and native to make a national type, spiritual, intelligent, wholesome, beautiful.... And I've fallen into the habit of thinking of you in that way—as thoroughly human, thoroughly feminine, heir to the best that is human, and to its temptations too; yet, somehow, instinctively finding the right way in life, the true way through doubt and stress.... Like the Land itself—with perhaps the blood of many nations in your veins.... I don't know exactly what I'm trying to say—"

"I know."

"Yes," he whispered, "you do know that all I have said is only a longer way of saying that I love you."

"Through stress and doubt," she murmured, "you think I will find the way?—with perhaps the blood of many nations in my veins, with all their transmitted emotions, desires, passions for my inheritance?... It is my only heritage. They did not even leave me a name; only a capacity for every human error, with no knowledge of what particular inherited failing I am to contend with when temptation comes. Do you wonder I am sometimes lonely and afraid?"

"You darling!" he said under his breath.

"Hush; that is forbidden. You know perfectly well it is. Are you laughing? That is very horrid of you when I'm trying so hard not to listen when you use forbidden words to me. But I heard you once when I should not have heard you. Does that seem centuries ago? Alas for us both, Ulysses, when I heard your voice calling me under the Southern stars! Would you ever have spoken if you knew what you know now?"

"I would have told you the truth sooner."

"Told me what truth?"

"That I love you, Calypso."

"You always answer like a boy! Ah, well I—if you knew how easily a girl believes such answers!"

He bent his head, raising her bare fingers to his lips. A tiny shock passed through them both; she released her hand and buried it in the folds of her kilt.

There was a pale flare of moonlight behind the forest; trunks and branches were becoming more distinct. A few moments later the Indian, bending low, came creeping back without a sound, and straightened up in the fathomless shadow of the oak, motioning Shiela and Hamil to rise.

"Choo-lee," he motioned with his lips; "Ko-la-pa-kin!"

Lips close to Hamil's ear she whispered: "He says that there are seven in that pine. Can you see them?"

He strained his eyes in vain; she had already found them and now stood close to his shoulder, whispering the direction.

"I can't make them out," he said. "Don't wait for me, but take your chance at once."

"Do you think I would do that?"

"You must! You have never shot a turkey—"

"Hush, silly. What pleasure would there be in it without you? Try to see them; look carefully. All those dark furry blotches against the sky are pine leaves, but the round shadowy lumps are turkeys; one is quite clearly silhouetted, now; even to his tail—"

"I believe I do see!" murmured Hamil. "By Jove, yes! Shiela, you're an angel to be so patient."

"I'll take the top bird," she whispered. "Are you ready? We must be quick."

"Ready," he motioned.

Then in the dim light one of the shadowy bunches rose abruptly, standing motionless on the branch, craning a long neck into the moonlight.

"Fire!" she whispered; and four red flashes in pairs split the gloom wide open for a second. Then roaring darkness closed about them.

Instantly the forest resounded with the thunderous racket of heavy wings as the flock burst into flight, clattering away through leafy obscurity; but under the uproar of shot and clapping wings sounded the thud and splash of something heavy crashing earthward; and the Indian, springing from root to tussock, vanished into the shadows.

"Two down!" said the girl, unsteadily. "Oh, I am so thankful that you got yours!"

They exchanged excited handclasps of mutual congratulation. Then he said:

"Shiela, you dear generous girl, I don't believe I hit anything, but I'll bet that you got a turkey with each barrel!"

"Foolish boy! Of course you grassed your bird! It wasn't a wing shot, but we took what fate sent us. Nobody can choose conditions on the firing line. We did our best, I think."

"Wise little Shiela! Her philosophy is as fascinating as it is sound!" He looked at her half smiling, partly serious. "You and I are on life's firing line, you know."

"Are we?"

"And under the lively fusillade of circumstances."

"Are we?"

He said: "It will show us up as we are.... I am afraid for us both."

"If you are—don't tell me."

"It is best to know the truth. We've got to stay on the firing line anyway. We might as well know that we are not very sure of ourselves. If the fear of God doesn't help us it will end us. But—" He walked up to her and took both her hands frankly. "We'll try to be good soldiers; won't we?"

"Yes."

"And good comrades—even if we can't be more?"

"Yes."

"And help each other under fire?"

"Yes."

"You make me very happy," he said simply; and turned to the Seminole who was emerging from obscurity, shoulders buried under a mass of bronzed feathers from which dangled two grotesque heads.

One was a gobbler—a magnificent patriarch; and Shiela with a little cry of delight turned to Hamil: "That's yours! I congratulate you with all my heart!"

"No, no!" he protested, "the gobbler fell to you—"

"It is yours!" she repeated firmly; "mine is this handsome, plump hen—"

"I won't claim that magnificent gobbler! Little Tiger, didn't Miss Cardross shoot this bird?"

"Gobbler top bird," nodded the Seminole proudly.

"You fired at the top bird, Shiela! That settles it! I'm perfectly delighted over this. Little Tiger, you stalked them beautifully; but how on earth you ever managed to roost them in the dark I can't make out!"

"See um same like tiger," nodded the pleased Seminole. And, to Shiela: "Pen-na-waw-suc-chai! I-hoo-es-chai." And he lighted his lantern.

"He says that the turkeys are all gone and that we had better go too, Mr. Hamil. What a perfect beauty that gobbler is! I'd much rather have him mounted than eat him. Perhaps we can do both. Eudo skins very skilfully and there's plenty of salt in camp. Look at that mist!"

And so, chattering away in highest spirits they fell into file behind the Seminole and his lantern, who, in the thickening fog, looked like some slim luminous forest-phantom with great misty wings atrail from either shoulder.

Treading the narrow way in each other's footsteps they heard, far in the darkness, the gruesome tumult of owls. Once the Indian's lantern flashed on a snake which rose quickly from compact coils, hissing and distending its neck; but for all its formidable appearance and loud, defiant hissing the Indian picked up a palmetto fan and contemptuously tossed the reptile aside into the bog.

"It's only a noisy puff-adder," said Shiela, who had retreated very close against Hamil, "but, oh, I don't love them even when they are harmless." And rather thoughtfully she disengaged herself from the sheltering arm of that all too sympathetic young man, and went forward, shivering a little as the hiss of the enraged adder broke out from the uncongenial mud where he had unwillingly landed.

And so they came to their horses through a white mist which had thickened so rapidly that the Indian's lantern was now only an iridescent star ringed with rainbows. And when they had been riding for twenty minutes Little Tiger halted them with lifted lantern and said quietly:

"Chi-ho-ches-chee!"

"Wh-at!" exclaimed the girl, incredulous.

"What did he say?" asked Hamil.

"He says that he is lost!"

Hamil stared around in dismay; a dense white wall shut out everything; the Indian's lantern at ten paces was invisible; he could scarcely see Shiela unless she rode close enough to touch his elbow.

"Catch um camp," observed Little Tiger calmly. "Loose bridle! Bimeby catch um camp. One horse lead. No be scared."

So Hamil dismounted and handed his bridle to the Indian; then Shiela cast her own bridle loose across the pommel, and touching her horse with both heels, rode forward, hands in her jacket pockets. And Hamil walked beside her, one arm on the cantle.

Into blank obscurity the horse moved, bearing to the left—a direction which seemed entirely wrong.

"Catch um camp," came the Indian's amused voice through the mist from somewhere close behind.

"It doesn't seem to me that this is the right direction," ventured Shiela doubtfully. "Isn't it absurd? Where are you, Mr. Hamil? Come closer and keep in touch with my stirrup. I found you in a fog and I really don't want to lose you in one."

She dropped one arm so that her hand rested lightly on his shoulder.

"This is not the first mist we've been through together," he said, laughing.

"I was thinking of that, too. They say the gods arrive and go in a mist. Don't go."

They moved on in silence, the horse stepping confidently into the crowding fog. Once Hamil stumbled over a root and Shiela's hand slipped around his neck, tightening a moment. He straightened up; but her hand slid back to his coat sleeve, resting so lightly that he could scarce feel the touch.

Then the horse stumbled, this time over the tongue of the camp wagon. Little Tiger was right; the horse had brought them back.

Hamil turned; Shiela swung one leg across the pommel and slipped from her saddle into his arms.

"Have you been happy, Shiela?"

"You know I have.... But—you must release me."

"Perfectly happy?"

"Ah, yes. Don't you know I have?" ... And in a low voice: "Release me now—for both our sakes."

She did not struggle nor did he retain her by perceptible force.

"Won't you release me?"

"Must I?"

"I thought you promised to help me—on the firing line?" She forced a little laugh, resting both her hands on his wrists against her waist. "You said," she added with an effort at lightness, "that we are under heavy fire now."

"The fire of circumstances?"

"The cross-fire—of temptation.... Help me."

His arms fell; neither moved. Then a pale spark grew in the mist, brighter, redder, and, side by side, they walked toward it.

"What luck!" cried Gray, lifting a blazing palmetto fan above his head. "We got ten mallard and a sprig! Where's your game? We heard you shoot four times!"

Shiela laughed as the Seminole loomed up in the incandescent haze of the camp fire, buried in plumage.

"Dad! Dad! Where are you? Mr. Hamil has shot a magnificent wild turkey!"

"Well, upon my word!" exclaimed Cardross, emerging from his section; "the luck of the dub is proverbial! Hamil, what the deuce do you mean by it? That's what' I want to know! O Lord! Look at that gobbler! Shiela, did you let this young man wipe both your eyes?"

"Mine? Oh, I almost forgot. You see I shot one of them."

"Which?"

"It happened to be the gobbler," she said. "It was a mere chance in the dark.... And—if my section is ready, dad—I'm a little tired, I think. Good night, everybody; good night, Mr. Hamil—and thank you for taking care of me."

* * * * *

Cardross, enveloped in blankets, glanced at Hamil.

"Did you ever know anybody so quick to give credit to others? It's worth something to hear anybody speak in that fashion."

"That is why I did not interrupt," said Hamil.

Cardross looked down at the dying coals, then directly at the silent young fellow—a long, keen glance; then his gaze fell again on the Seminole fire.

"Good night, sir," said Hamil at last.

"Good night, my boy," replied the older man very quietly.



CHAPTER XIII

THE SILENT PARTNERS

Late one evening toward the end of the week a somewhat battered camping party, laden with plump, fluffy bunches of quail, and plumper strings of duck, wind-scorched, sun-burnt, brier-torn and trail-worn, re-entered the patio of the Cardross villa, and made straight for shower-bath, witch-hazel, fresh pyjamas, and bed.

In vain Jessie Carrick, Cecile, and their mother camped around Shiela's bed after the tray was removed, and Shiela's flushed face, innocent as usual of sunburn, lay among the pillows, framed by the brown-gold lustre of her hair.

"We had such a good time, mother; Mr. Hamil shot a turkey," she said sleepily. "Mr. Hamil—Mr. H-a-m-i-l"—A series of little pink yawns, a smile, a faint sigh terminated consciousness as she relaxed into slumber as placid as her first cradle sleep. So motionless she lay, bare arms wound around the pillow, that they could scarcely detect her breathing save when the bow of pale-blue ribbon stirred on her bosom.

"The darling!" whispered Mrs. Carrick; "look at that brier mark across her wrist!—our poor little worn-out colleen!"

"She was not too far gone to mention Garret Hamil," observed Cecile.

Mrs. Cardross looked silently at Cecile, then at the girl on the bed who had called her mother. After a moment she bent with difficulty and kissed the brier-torn wrist, wondering perhaps whether by chance a deeper wound lay hidden beneath the lace-veiled, childish breast.

"Little daughter—little daughter!" she murmured close to the small unheeding ear. Cecile waited, a smile half tender, half amused curving her parted lips; then she glanced curiously at Mrs. Carrick. But that young matron, ignoring the enfant terrible, calmly tucked her arm under her mother's; Cecile, immersed in speculative thought, followed them from the room; a maid extinguished the lights.

In an hour the Villa Cardross was silent and dark, save that, in the moonlight which struck through the panes of Malcourt's room, an unquiet shadow moved from window to window, looking out into the mystery of night.

* * * * *

The late morning sun flung a golden net across Malcourt's bed; he lay asleep, dark hair in handsome disorder, dark eyes sealed—too young to wear that bruised, loose mask so soon with the swollen shadows under lid and lip. Yet, in his unconscious features there was now a certain simplicity almost engaging, which awake, he seemed to lack; as though latent somewhere within him were qualities which chance might germinate into nobler growth. But chance, alone, is a poor gardener.

Hamil passing the corridor as the valet, carrying a tray, opened Malcourt's door, glanced in at him; and Malcourt awoke at the same moment, and sat bolt upright.

"Hello, Hamil!" he nodded sleepily, "come in, old fellow!" And, to the valet: "No breakfast for me, thank you—except grape-fruit!—unless you've brought me a cuckootail? Yes? No? Stung! Never mind; just hand me a cigarette and take away the tray. It's a case of being a very naughty boy, Hamil. How are you anyway, and what did you shoot?"

Hamil greeted him briefly, but did not seem inclined to enter or converse.

Malcourt yawned, glanced at the grape-fruit, then affably at Hamil.

"I say," he began, "hope you'll overlook my rotten behaviour last time we met. I'd been dining at random, and I'm usually a brute when I do that."

"Oh, it's all right," said Hamil, looking at the row of tiny Chinese idols on the mantel.

"No rancour?"

"No. Only—why do you do it, Malcourt?"

"Why do I do which? The wheel or the lady?"

"Oh, the whole bally business? It isn't as if you were lonely and put to it. There are plenty of attractive girls about, and anybody will take you on at Bridge. Of course it's none of my affair—but we came unpleasantly close to a quarrel—which is my only excuse."

Malcourt looked at him thoughtfully. "Hamil, do you know, I've always liked you a damn sight better than you've liked me."

Hamil said, laughing outright: "I never saw very much of you to like or dislike."

Malcourt smiled, stretched his limbs lazily, and lighted a cigarette.

"As a matter of fact," he said, "you think I'm worse than I am, but I know you are worse than you think, because I couldn't even secretly feel friendly toward a prig. You've had a less battered career than I; you are, in consequence, less selfish, less ruthless, less cynical concerning traditions and illusions. You've something left to stick to; I haven't. You are a little less intelligent than I, and therefore possess more natural courage and credulity. Outside of these things we are more or less alike, Hamil. Hope you don't mind my essay on man."

"No," said Hamil, vastly amused.

"The trouble with me," continued Malcourt, "is that I possess a streak of scientific curiosity that you lack; which is my eternal undoing and keeps me poor and ignobly busy. I ought to have leisure; the world should see to it that I have sufficient leisure and means to pursue my studies in the interest of social economy. Take one of my favourite experiments, for example. I see a little ball rattling around in a wheel. Where will that ball stop? You, being less intellectual than I, don't care where it stops. I do. Instantly my scientific curiosity is aroused; I reason logically; I evolve an opinion; I back that opinion; and I remain busy and poor. I see a pretty woman. Is she responsive or unresponsive to intelligently expressed sentiment? I don't know. You don't care. I do. My curiosity is piqued. She becomes to me an abstract question which scientific experiment alone can elucidate—"

Hamil, leaning on the footboard of the bed, laughed and straightened up.

"All right, Malcourt, if you think it worth while—"

"What pursuit, if you please, is worthier than logical and scientific investigations?"

"Make a lot of honest money and marry some nice girl and have horses and dogs and a bully home and kids. Look here, as Wayward says, you're not the devilish sort you pretend to be. You're too young for one thing. I never knew you to do a deliberately ungenerous act—"

"Like most rascals I'm liable to sentimental generosity in streaks? Thanks. But, somehow, I'm so damned intelligent that I can never give myself any credit for relapsing into traditional virtues. Impulse is often my executive officer; and if I were only stupid I'd take great comfort out of it."

Hamil walked toward the door, stopping on the threshold to say: "Well, I'll tell you one thing, Malcourt; I've often disliked you at times; but I don't now. And I don't exactly know why."

"I do."

"Why?"

"Oh, because you've forgiven me. Also—you think I've a better side."

"Haven't you?"

"My son," said Malcourt, "if somebody'll prove it to me I might sleep better. Just at present I'm ready for anything truly criminal. There was a killing at the Club all right. I assumed the role of the defunct. Now I haven't any money; I've overdrawn my balance and my salary; Portlaw is bilious, peevish, unapproachable. If I asked you for a loan I'd only fall a victim again to my insatiable scientific curiosity. So I'll just lie here and browse on cigarettes and grape-fruit until something happens—"

"If you need any money—"

"I told you that we are more or less alike," nodded Malcourt. "Your offer is partly traditional, partly impulsive, altogether ill-considered, and does your intelligence no credit!"

Hamil laughed.

"All the same it's an offer," he said, "and it stands. I'm glad I know you better, Malcourt. I'll be sorry instead of complacently disgusted if you never pan out; but I'll bet you do, some time."

Malcourt looked up.

"I'm ass enough to be much obliged," he said. "And now, before you go, what the devil did you shoot in the woods?"

"Miss Cardross got a gobbler—about the biggest bird I ever saw. Eudo Stent skinned it and Mr. Cardross is going to have it set up in New York. It's a wonderful—"

"Didn't you shoot anything?"

"Oh, I assassinated a few harmless birds," said Hamil absently; and walked out into the corridor. "I've got to go over a lot of accumulated letters and things," he called back. "See you later, Malcourt."

There was a mass of mail, bills, plans, and office reports for him lying on the hall table. He gathered these up and hastened down the stairway.

On the terrace below he found Mrs. Cardross, and stopped to tell her what a splendid trip they had, and how beautifully Shiela had shot.

"You did rather well yourself," drawled Mrs. Cardross, with a bland smile. "Shiela says so."

"Oh, yes, but my shooting doesn't compare with Shiela's. I never knew such a girl; I never believed they existed—"

"They are rare," nodded the matron. "I am glad everybody finds my little daughter so admirable in the field."

"Beyond comparison in the field and everywhere," said Hamil, with a cordiality so laboriously frank that Mrs. Cardross raised her eyes—an instant only—then continued sorting the skeins of silk in her voluminous lap.

Shiela appeared in sight among the roses across the lawn; and, as Mr. Cardross came out on the terrace to light his after-breakfast cigar, Hamil disappeared in the direction of the garden where Shiela now stood under the bougainvillia, leisurely biting into a sapodilla.

Mrs. Cardross nodded to her white-linen-clad husband, who looked very handsome with the silvered hair at his temples accentuating the clear, deep tan of his face.

"You are burnt, Neville. Did you and the children have a good time?"

"A good time! Well, just about the best in my life—except when I'm with you. Too bad you couldn't have been there. Shiela shoots like a demon. You ought to have seen her among the quail, and later, in the saw-grass, pulling down mallard and duskies from the sky-high overhead range! I tell you, Amy, she's the cleverest, sweetest, cleanest sportsman I ever saw afield. Gray, of course, stopped his birds very well. He has a lot of butterflies to show you, and—'longicorns,' I believe he calls those beetles with enormous feelers. Little Tiger is a treasure; Eudo and the others did well—"

"And Mr. Hamil?" drawled his wife.

"I like him. It's a verdict, dear. You were quite right; he is a nice boy—rather a lovable boy. I've discovered no cloven hoof about him. He doesn't shoot particularly well, but his field manners are faultless."

His wife, always elaborately upholstered, sat in her wide reclining chair, plump, jewelled fingers busy with a silk necktie for Hamil, her pretty blue eyes raised at intervals to scan her husband's animated features.

"Does Gray like him as much as ever, Neville?"

"O Lord, Gray adores him, and I like him, and you knit neckties for him, and Jessie doses him, and Cecile quotes him—"

"And Shiela?"

"Oh, Shiela seems to like him," said Cardross genially. His wife raised her eyes, then calmly scrutinized her knitting.

"And Mr. Hamil?"

"What about him, dear?"

"Does he seem to like Shiela?"

Her husband glanced musingly out over the lawn where, in their white flannels, Shiela and Hamil were now seated together under a brilliant Japanese lawn umbrella, examining the pile of plans, reports and blue-prints which had accumulated in Hamil's office since his absence.

"He—seems to like her," nodded Cardross, "I'm sure he does. Why not?"

"They were together a good deal, you said last night."

"Yes; but either Gray or I or one of the guides—"

"Of course. Then you don't think—"

Cardross waited and finally looked up. "What, dear?"

"That there is anything more than a sensible friendship—"

"Between Shiela and Garret Hamil?"

"Yes; we were not discussing the Emperor of China."

Cardross laughed and glanced sideways at the lawn umbrella.

"I—don't—know."

His wife raised her brows but not her head.

"Why, Neville?"

"Why what?"

"Your apparent doubt as to the significance of their friendship."

"Dear—I don't know much about those things."

His wife waited.

"Hamil is so nice to everybody; and I've not noticed how he is with other young girls," continued her husband restlessly. "He does seem to tag after Shiela.... Once or twice I thought—or it seemed to me—or rather—"

His wife waited.

"Well, he seemed rather impressed by her field qualities," concluded Cardross weakly.

His wife waited.

Her husband lit a cigar very carefully: "That's all I noticed, dear."

Mrs. Cardross laid the narrow bit of woven blue silk on her knee and smoothed it reflectively.

"Neville!"

"Yes, dear."

"I wonder whether Mr. Hamil has heard."

Her husband did not misunderstand. "I think it likely. That old harridan—"

"Please, Neville!"

"Well, then, Mrs. Van Dieman has talked ever since you and Shiela sat on the aspirations of her impossible son."

"You think Mr. Hamil knows?"

"Why not? Everybody does, thanks to that venomous old lady and her limit of an offspring."

"And in spite of that you think Mr. Hamil might be seriously impressed?"

"Why not?" repeated Cardross. "She's the sweetest, cleanest-cut sportsman—"



"Dear, a field-trial is not what we are discussing."

"No, of course. But those things count with a man. And besides, admitting that the story is all over Palm Beach and New York by this time, is there a more popular girl here than our little Shiela? Look at the men—troops of 'em! Alex Anan knew when he tried his luck. You had to tell Mr. Cuyp, but Shiela was obliged to turn him down after all. It certainly has not intimidated anybody. Do you remember two years ago how persistent Louis Malcourt was until you squelched him?"

"Yes; but he didn't know the truth then. He acts sometimes as though he knew it now. I don't think he would ask Shiela again. And, Neville, if Mr. Hamil does not know, and if you think there is the slightest chance of Shiela becoming interested in him, he ought to be told—indirectly. Unhappiness for both might lie in his ignorance."

"Shiela would tell him before he—"

"Of course. But—it might then be too late for her—if he prove less of a man than we think him! He comes from a family whose connections have always thought a great deal of themselves—in the narrower sense; a family not immune from prejudice. His aunt, Miss Palliser, is very amiable; but, dear, we must not make the mistake that she could consider Shiela good enough for her nephew. One need not be a snob to hesitate under the pitiful circumstances."

"If I know Hamil, he'll ask little advice from his relatives—"

"But he will receive plenty, Neville."

Cardross shrugged. "Then it's up to him, Amy."

"Exactly. But do you wish to have our little Shiela in a position where her declared lover hesitates? And so I say, Neville, that it is better for her that Mr. Hamil should know the truth in ample time to reconsider any sentiment before he utters it. It is only fair to him and to Shiela. That is all."

"Why do you say all this now, dearest? Have you thought—"

"Yes, a little. The child is fond of him. I did think she once cared for Louis—as a young girl cares for a boy. But we couldn't permit her to take any chances, poor fellow!—his family record is sadly against him. No; we did right, Neville. And now, at the first sign, we must do right again between Shiela and this very lovable boy who is making your park for you."

"Of course," said Cardross absently, "but the man who hesitates because of what he learns about Shiela isn't worth enlightening." He looked out across the lawn. "I hope it happens," he said. "And, by the way, dear, I've got to go to town."

"O Neville!"

"Don't worry; I'm not going to contract pneumonia—"

"When are you going?"

"To-morrow, I think."

"Is it anything that bothers you?"

"No, nothing in particular. I have a letter from Acton. There seems to be some uncertainty developing in one or two business quarters. I thought I'd see for myself."

"Are you worrying?"

"About what?"

"About the Shoshone Securities Company?"

"Not exactly worrying."

She shook her head, but said nothing more.

During February the work on the Cardross estate developed sufficiently to become intensely interesting to the family. A vast circular sunken garden, bewitchingly formal, and flanked by a beautiful terrace and balus trade of coquina, was approaching completion between the house and an arm of the lagoon. The stone bridge over the water remained unfinished, but already, across it, miles of the wide forest avenue stretched straight away, set at intervals by carrefours centred with fountain basins from which already tall sparkling columns of water tumbled up into the sunshine.

But still the steam jets puffed up above the green tree-tops; and the sickening whine of the saw-mill, and the rumble of traction engines over rough new roads of shell, and the far racket of chisel and hammer on wood and stone continued from daylight till dark.

Every day brought to Hamil new questions, new delays, vexations of lighting, problems of piping and drainage. Contractors and sub-contractors beset him; draughtsmen fairly buried him under tons of drawings and blue-prints. All of which was as nothing compared to the labour squabbles and endless petty entanglements which arose from personal jealousy or political vindictiveness, peppered with dark hints of peonage, threats, demands, and whispers of graft.

The leasing of convict labour for the more distant road work also worried him, but the sheriffs of Dade and Volusia were pillars of strength and comfort to him in perplexity—lean, soft-spoken, hawk-faced gentlemen, gentle and incorruptible, who settled scuffles with a glance, and local riots with a deadly drawl of warning which carried conviction like a bullet to the "bad" nigger of the blue-gum variety, as well as to the brutish white autocrat of the turpentine camps.

That the work progressed so swiftly was wonderful, even with the unlimited means of Neville Cardross to back his demands for haste. And it might have been impossible to produce any such results in so short a period had there not been contractors in the vicinity who were accustomed to handle vast enterprises on short notice. Some of these men, fortunately for Hamil, had been temporarily released from sections of the great Key West Line construction; and these contractors with their men and materials were immediately available for the labour in hand.

So all though February work was rushed forward; and March found the sunken garden in bloom, stone-edged pools full of lotus and lilies, orange trees blossoming in a magnificent sweep around the balustrade of the terrace, and, beyond, the graceful stone bridge, passable but not quite completed. Neither were the great systems of pools, fountains, tanks, and lakes completed by any means, but here and there foaming jets trembled and glittered in the sunlight, and here and there placid reaches, crystal clear, reflected the blue above.

As for Palm Beach, visitors and natives had watched with liveliest interest the development of the great Cardross park. In the height of the season visits to the scene of operations were made functions; tourists and residents gathered in swarms and took tea and luncheon under the magnificent live-oaks of the hammock.

Mrs. Cardross herself gave a number of lawn fetes with the kindly intention of doing practical good to Hamil, the success of whose profession was so vitally dependent upon the approval and personal interest of wealth and fashion and idleness.

Shiela constantly tormented him about these functions for his benefit, suggesting that he attire himself in a sloppy velvet jacket and let his hair grow and his necktie flow. She pretended to prepare placards advertising Hamil's popular parks for poor people at cut rates, including wooden horses and a barrel-organ.

"An idea of mine," she suggested, glancing up from the writing-pad on her knees, "is to trim a dozen alligators with electric lights and turn them loose in our lake. There's current enough in the canal to keep the lights going, isn't there, Mr. Hamil? Incandescent alligators would make Luna Park look like a bog full of fireflies—"

"O Shiela, let him alone," protested Mrs. Carrick. "For all you know Mr. Hamil may be dreadfully sensitive."

"I'll let him alone if he'll let his beard grow horrid and silky and permit us to address him as Cher maitre—"

"I won't insist on that if you'll call me by my first name," said Hamil mischievously.

"I never will," returned the girl. Always when he suggested it, the faint pink of annoyed embarrassment tinted Shiela's cheeks. And now everybody in the family rallied her on the subject, for they all had come to call him Garry by this time.

"Don't I always say 'Shiela' to you?" he insisted.

"Yes, you do and nobody was consulted. I informed my mother, but she doesn't seem to resent it. So I am obliged to. Besides I don't like your first name."

Mrs. Cardross laughed gently over her embroidery; Malcourt, who was reading the stock column in the News, turned and looked curiously at Hamil, then at Shiela. Then catching Mrs. Carrick's eye:

"Portlaw is rather worried over the market," he said. "I think he's going North in a day or two."

"Why, Louis!" exclaimed Mrs. Cardross; "then you will be going, too, I suppose."

"His ways are my ways," nodded Malcourt. "I've been here too long anyway," he added in a lower voice, folding the paper absently across his knees. He glanced once more at Shiela, but she had returned to her letter writing.

Everybody spoke of his going in tones of civil regret—everybody except Shiela, who had not even looked at him. Cecile's observations were plainly perfunctory, but she made them nevertheless, for she had begun to take the same feminine interest in Malcourt that everybody was now taking in view of his very pronounced attentions to Virginia Suydam.

All the world may not love a lover, but all the world watches him. And a great many pairs of bright eyes and many more pairs of faded ones were curiously following the manoeuvres of Louis Malcourt and Virginia Suydam.

Very little of what these two people did escaped the social Argus at Palm Beach—their promenades on the verandas of the two great hotels, their appearance on the links and tennis-courts together, their daily encounter at the bathing-hour, their inevitable meeting and pairing on lawn, in ballroom, afloat, ashore, wherever young people gathered under the whip of light social obligations or in pursuit of pleasure.

And they were discussed. She being older than he, and very wealthy, the veranda discussions were not always amiable; but nobody said anything very bitter because Virginia was in a position to be socially respected and the majority of people rather liked Malcourt. Besides there was just enough whispering concerning his performances at the Club and the company he kept there to pique the friendly curiosity of a number of fashionable young matrons who are always prepossessed in favour of a man at whom convention might possibly one day glance askance.

So everybody at Palm Beach was at least aware of the affair. Hamil had heard of it from his pretty aunt, and had been thoroughly questioned. It was very evident that Miss Palliser viewed the proceedings with dismay for she also consulted Wayward, and finally, during the confidential retiring-hour, chose the right moment to extract something definite from Virginia.

But that pale and pretty spinster was too fluently responsive, admitting that perhaps she had been seeing a little too much of Malcourt, protesting it to be accidental, agreeing with Constance Palliser that more discretion should be exercised, and promising it with a short, flushed laugh.

And the next morning she rode to the Inlet with Malcourt, swam with him to the raft, and danced with him until dawn at "The Breakers."

* * * * *

Mrs. Cardross and Jessie Carrick bent over their embroidery; Shiela continued her letter writing with Gray's stylographic pen; Hamil, booted and spurred, both pockets stuffed with plans, paced the terrace waiting for his horse to be brought around; Malcourt had carried himself and his newspaper to the farther end of the terrace, and now stood leaning over the balustrade, an unlighted cigarette between his lips.

"I suppose you'll go to Luckless Lake," observed Hamil, pausing beside Malcourt in his walk.

"Yes. There's plenty to do. We stripped ten thousand trout in October, and we're putting in German boar this spring."

"I should think your occupation would be fascinating."

"Yes? It's lonely, too, until Portlaw's camp parties begin. I get an overdose of nature at times. There's nobody of my own ilk there except our Yale and Cornell foresters. In winter it's deadly, Hamil, deadly! I don't shoot, you know; it's deathly enough as it is."

"I don't believe I'd find it so."

"You think not, but you would. That white solitude may be good medicine for some, but it makes me furious after a while, and I often wish that the woods and the deer and the fish and I myself and the whole devilish outfit were under the North Pole and frozen solid! But I can't afford to pick and choose. If I looked about for something else to do I don't believe anybody would want me. Portlaw pays me more than I'm worth as a Harvard post-graduate. And if that is an asset it's my only one."

Hamil, surprised at his bitterness, looked at him with troubled eyes. Then his eyes wandered to Shiela, who had now taken up her embroidery.

"I can't help it," said Malcourt impatiently; "I like cities and people. I always liked people. I never had enough of people. I never had any society as a boy; and, Hamil, you can't imagine how I longed for it. It would have been well for me to have had it. There was never any in my own home; there was never anything in my home life but painful memories of domestic trouble and financial stress. I was for a while asked to the homes of schoolmates, but could offer no hospitality in return. Sensitiveness and humiliation have strained the better qualities out of me. I've been bruised dry."

He leaned on his elbows, hands clasped, looking out into the sunlight where myriads of brilliant butterflies were fluttering over the carpet of white phlox.

"Hamil," he said, "whatever is harsh, aggressive, cynical, mean, sneering, selfish in me has been externally acquired. You scrape even a spineless mollusc too long with a pin, and the irritation produces a defensive crust. I began boy-like by being so damned credulous and impulsive and affectionate and tender-hearted that even my kid sister laughed at me; and she was only three years older than I. Then followed that period of social loneliness, the longing for the companionship of boys and girls—girls particularly, in spite of agonies of shyness and the awakening terrors of shame when the domestic troubles ended in an earthquake which gave me to my father and Helen to my mother, and a scandal to the newspapers.... O hell! I'm talking like an autobiography! Don't go, if you can stand it for a moment longer; I'm never likely to do it again."

Hamil, silent and uncomfortable, stood stiffly upright, gloved hands resting on the balustrade behind him. Malcourt continued to stare at the orange-and-yellow butterflies dancing over the snowy beds of blossoms.

"In college it was the same," he said. "I had few friends—and no home to return to after—my father-died." He hesitated as though listening. Whenever he spoke of his father, which was seldom, he seemed to assume that curious listening attitude; as though the man, dead by his own hand, could hear him....

"Wayward saw me through. I've paid him back what he spent on me. You know his story; everybody does. I like him and sponge on him. We irritate each other; I'm a beast to resent his sharpness. But he's not right when he says I never had any illusions.... I had—and have.... I do beastly things, too.... Some men will do anything to crush out the last quiver of pride in them.... And the worst is that, mangled, torn, mine still palpitates—like one of your wretched, bloody quail gaping on its back! By God! At least, I couldn't do that!—Kill for pleasure!—as better men than I do. And better women, too!... What am I talking about? I've done worse than that on impulse—meaning well, like other fools."

Malcourt's face had become drawn, sallow, almost sneering; but in the slow gaze he turned on Hamil was that blank hopelessness which no man can encounter and remember unmoved.

"Malcourt," he said, "you're morbid. Men like you; women like you—So do I—now—"

"It's too late. I needed that sort of thing when I was younger. Kindness arouses my suspicion now. Toleration is what it really is. I have no money, no social position here—or abroad; only a thoroughly discredited name in two hemispheres. It took several generations for the Malcourts to go to the devil; but I fancy we'll all arrive on time. What a reunion! I hate the idea of family parties, even in hell."

He straightened up gracefully and lighted his cigarette; then the easy smile twitched his dry lips again and he nodded mockingly at Hamil:

"Count on my friendship, Hamil; it's so valuable. It has already quite ruined one person's life, and will no doubt damage others before I flicker out."

"What do you mean, Malcourt?"

"What I say, old fellow. With the best intentions toward self-sacrifice I usually do irreparable damage to the objects of my regard. Beware my friendship, Hamil. There's no luck in it or me.... But I do like you."

He laughed and sauntered off into the house as Hamil's horse was brought around; and Hamil, traversing the terrace, mounted under a running fire of badinage from Shiela and Cecile who had just come from the tennis-courts to attempt some hated embroidery for the charity fair then impending.

So he rode away to his duties in the forest, leaving a placid sewing-circle on the terrace. From which circle, presently, Shiela silently detached herself, arms encumbered with her writing materials and silks. Strolling aimlessly along the balustrade for a while, watching the bees scrambling in the scarlet trumpet-flowers, she wandered into the house and through to the cool patio.

For some days, now, after Hamil's daily departure, it had happened that an almost unendurable restlessness akin to suspense took possession of her; a distaste and impatience of people and their voices, and the routine of the commonplace.

To occupy herself in idleness was an effort; she had no desire to. She had recently acquired the hammock habit, lying for hours in the coolness of the patio, making no effort to think, listening to the splash of the fountain, her book or magazine open across her breast. When people came she picked up the book and scanned its pages; sometimes she made pretence of sleeping.

But that morning, Malcourt, errant, found her reading in her hammock. Expecting him to pass his way as usual, she nodded with civil indifference, and continued her reading.

"I want to ask you something," he said, "if I may interrupt you."

"What is it, Louis?"

"May I draw up a chair?"

"Why—if you wish. Is there anything I can do for you? "—closing her book.

"Is there anything I can do for you, Shiela?"

A tinge of colour came into her cheeks.

"Thank you," she said in curt negation.

"Are you quite sure?"

"Quite. What do you mean?"

"There is one thing I might do for your sake," he smiled—"blow my bally brains out."

She said in a low contemptuous voice: "Better resort to that for your own sake than do what you are doing to Miss Suydam."

"What am I doing to Miss Suydam?"

"Making love to her."

He sat, eyes idly following the slight swaying motion of her hammock, the smile still edging his lips.

"Don't worry about Miss Suydam," he said; "she can take care of herself. What I want to say is this: Once out of mistaken motives—which nobody, including yourself, would ever credit—I gave you all I had to give—my name.... It's not much of a name; but I thought you could use it. I was even fool enough to think—other things. And as usual I succeeded in injuring where I meant only kindness. Can you believe that?"

"I—think you meant it kindly," she said under her breath. "It was my fault, Louis. I do not blame you, if you really cared for me. I've told you so before."

"Yes, but I was ass enough to think you cared for me."

She lay in her hammock, looking at him across the crimson-fringed border.

"There are two ways out of it," he said; "one is divorce. Have you changed your mind?"

"What is the other?" she asked coldly.

"That—if you could ever learn to care for me—we might try—" He stopped short.

For two years he had not ventured such a thing to her. The quick, bright anger warned him from her eyes. But she said quietly: "You know that is utterly impossible."

"Is it impossible. Shiela?"

"Absolutely. And a trifle offensive."

He said pleasantly: "I was afraid so, but I wanted to be sure. I did not mean to offend you. People change and mature in two years.... I suppose you are as angrily impatient of sentiment in a man as you were then."

"I cannot endure it—"

Her voice died out and she blushed furiously as the memory of Hamil flashed in her mind.

"Shiela," he said quietly, "now and then there's a streak of misguided decency in me. It cropped out that winter day when I did what I did. And I suppose it's cropping up now when I ask you, for your own sake, to get rid of me and give yourself a chance."

"How?"

"Legally."

"I cannot, and you know it."

"You are wrong. Do you think for one moment that your father and mother would accept the wretched sacrifice you are making of your life if they knew—"

"The old arguments again," she said impatiently.

"There is a new argument," said Malcourt, staring at her.

"What new argument?"

"Hamil."

Then the vivid colour surged anew from neck to hair, and she rose in the hammock, bewildered, burning, incensed.

"If it were true," she stammered, leaning on one arm, "do you think me capable of disgracing my own people?"

"The disgrace will be mine and yours. Is not Hamil worth it?"

"No man is worth any wrong I do to my own family!"

"You are wronging more people than your own, Shiela—"

"It is not true!" she said breathlessly. "There is a nobler happiness than one secured at the expense of selfishness and ingratitude. I tell you, as long as I live, I will not have them know or suffer because of my disgraceful escapade with you! You probably meant well; I must have been crazy, I think. But we've got to endure the consequences. If there's unhappiness and pain to be borne, we've got to bear it—we alone—"

"And Hamil. All three of us."

She looked at him desperately; read in his cool gaze that she could not deceive him, and remained silent.

"What about Hamil's unhappiness?" repeated Malcourt slowly.

"If—if he has any, he requires no instruction how to bear it."

Malcourt nodded, then, with a weary smile: "I do not plead with you for my own chance of happiness. Yet, you owe me something, Shiela."

"What?"

"The right to face the world under true colours. You owe me that."

She whitened to the lips. "I know it."

"Suppose I ask for that right?"

"I have always told you that, if you demanded it, I would take your name openly."

"Yes; but now you admit that you love Hamil."

"Love! Love!" she repeated, exasperated. "What has that got to do with it? I know what the law of obligation is. You meant to be generous to me and you ruined your own life. If your future career requires me to publicly assume your name and a place in your household, I've told you that I'll pay that debt."

"Very well. When will you pay it?"

She blanched pitifully.

"When you insist, Louis."

"Do you mean you would go out there to the terrace, now!—and tell your mother what you've done?"

"Yes, if I must," she answered faintly.

"In other words, because you think you're in my debt, you stand ready to acknowledge, on demand, what I gave you—my name?"

Her lips moved in affirmation, but deep in her sickened eyes he saw terror unspeakable.

"Well," he said, looking away from her, "don't worry, Shiela. I'm not asking that of you; in fact I don't want it. That's not very complimentary, but it ought to relieve you.... I'm horribly sorry about Hamil; I like him; I'd like to do something for him. But if I attempted anything it would turn out all wrong.... As for you—well, you are plucky. Poor little girl! I wish I could help you out—short of a journey to eternity. And perhaps I'll take that before very long," he added gaily; "I smoke too many cigarettes. Cheer up, Shiela, and send me a few thousand for Easter."

He rose, gracefully as always, picked up the book from where it lay tumbled in the netting of the hammock, glanced casually through a page or two.

Still scanning the print, he said:

"I wanted to give you a chance; I'm going North in a day or two. It isn't likely we'll meet again very soon.... So I thought I'd speak.... And, if at any time you change your ideas—I won't oppose it."

"Thank you, Louis."

He was running over the pages rapidly now, the same unchanging smile edging his lips.

"The unexpected sometimes happens, Shiela—particularly when it's expected. There are ways and ways—particularly when one is tired—too tired to lie awake and listen any longer, or resist.... My father used to say that anybody who could use an anaesthetic was the equal of any graduate physician—"

"Louis! What do you mean?"

But his head was bent again in that curious attitude of listening; and after a moment he made an almost imperceptible gesture of acquiescence, and turned to her with the old, easy, half-impudent, half-challenging air.

"Gray has a butterfly in his collection which shows four distinct forms. Once people thought these forms were distinct species; now they know they all are the same species of butterfly in various suits of disguise—just as you might persuade yourself that unhappiness and happiness are radically different. But some people find satisfaction in being unhappy, and some find it in being happy; and as it's all only the gratification of that imperious egotism we call conscience, the specific form of all is simply ethical selfishness."

He laughed unrestrainedly at his own will-o'-the-wisp philosophy, looking very handsome and care-free there where the noon sun slanted across the white arcade all thick with golden jasmine bloom.

And Shiela, too intelligent to mistake him, smiled a little at his gay perversity.

* * * * *

He met Portlaw, later, at the Beach Club for luncheon; and, as the latter looked particularly fat, warm, and worried, Malcourt's perverse humour remained in the ascendant, and he tormented Portlaw until that badgered gentleman emitted a bellow of exasperation.

"What on earth's the matter?" asked Malcourt in pretended astonishment. "I thought I was being funny."

"Funny! Does a man want to be prodded with wit at his own expense when the market is getting funnier every hour—at his expense? Go and look at the tape if you want to know why I don't enjoy either your wit or this accursed luncheon."

"What's happening, Portlaw?"

"I wish you'd tell me."

"Muck-raking?"

"Partly, I suppose."

"Administration?"

"People say so. I don't believe it. There's a rotten lot of gambling going on. How do I know what's the matter?"

"Perhaps there isn't anything the matter, old fellow."

"Well, there is. I can sniff it 'way down here. And I'm going home to walk about and listen and sniff some more. Sag, sag, sag!—that's what the market has been doing for months. Yet, if I sell it short, it rallies on me and I'm chased to cover. I go long and the thing sags like the panties on that French count, yonder.... Who's the blond girl with him?"

"Hope springs eternal in the human beast," observed Malcourt. "Hope is a bird, Porty, old chap—"

"Hope is a squab," growled Portlaw, swallowing vast quantities of claret, "all squashy and full of pin-feathers. That's what hope is. It needs a thorough roasting, and it's getting it."

"Exquisite metaphor," mused Malcourt, gazing affably at the rather blond girl who crumbled her bread and looked occasionally and blankly at him, occasionally and affectionately at the French count, her escort, who was consuming lobster with characteristic Gallic thoroughness and abandon.

"The world," quoted Malcourt, "is so full of a number of things. You're one of 'em, Portlaw; I'm several.... Well, if you're going North I'd better begin to get ready."

"What have you got to do?"

"One or two friends of mine who preside in the Temple of Chance yonder. Oh, don't assume that babyish pout! I've won enough back to keep going for the balance of the time we remain."

Portlaw, pleased and relieved, finished his claret.

"You've a few ladies to take leave of, also," he said briskly.

"Really, Portlaw!"—in gentle admonition.

"Haw! Haw!" roared Portlaw, startling the entire cafe; "you'd better get busy. There'll be a run on the bank. There'll be a waiting line before Malcourt & Co. opens for business, each fair penitent with her little I.O.U. to be cashed! Haw! Haw! Sad dog! Bad dog! The many-sided Malcourt! Come on; I've got a motor across the—"

"And I've an appointment with several superfluous people and a girl," said Malcourt drily. Then he glanced at the blond companion of the count who continued crumbling bread between her brilliantly ringed fingers as though she had never before seen Louis Malcourt. The price of diamonds varies. Sometimes it is merely fastidious observance of convention and a sensitive escort. It all depends on the world one inhabits; it does indeed.



CHAPTER XIV

STRATEGY

An hour or two later that afternoon Wayward and Constance Palliser, Gussie Vetchen, and Livingston Cuyp gazed with variously mingled sentiments upon the torpid saurians belonging to one Alligator Joe in an enclosure rather remote from the hotel.

Vetchen bestowed largess upon the small, freckled boy attendant; and his distinguished disapproval upon the largest lady-crocodile which, with interlocked but grinning jaws, slumbered under a vertical sun in monochromatic majesty.

"One perpetual and gigantic simper," he said, disgusted.

"Rather undignified for a thing as big as that to lay eggs like a hen," observed Cuyp, not intending to be funny.

Wayward and Miss Palliser had wandered off together to inspect the pumps. Vetchen, always inquisitive, had discovered a coy manatee in one tank, and was all for poking it with his walking-stick until he saw its preposterous countenance emerge from the water.

"Great heavens," he faltered, "it looks like a Dutch ancestor of Cuyp's!"

Cuyp, intensely annoyed, glanced at his watch.

"Where the mischief did Miss Suydam and Malcourt go?" he asked Wayward. "I say, Miss Palliser, you don't want to wait here any longer, do you?"

"They're somewhere in the labyrinth," said Wayward. "Their chair went that way, didn't it, boy?"

"Yeth, thir," said the small and freckled attendant.

So the party descended the wooden incline to where their sleepy black chairmen lay on the grass, waiting; and presently the two double chairs wheeled away toward that amusing maze of jungle pathways cut through the impenetrable hammock, and popularly known as the labyrinth.

But Miss Suydam and Mr. Malcourt were not in the labyrinth. At that very moment they were slowly strolling along the eastern dunes where the vast solitude of sky and sea seemed to depress even the single white-headed eagle standing on the wet beach, head and tail adroop, motionless, fish-gorged. No other living thing was in sight except the slim, blue dragon-flies, ceaselessly darting among the beach-grapes; nothing else stirred except those two figures on the dunes, moving slowly, heads bent as though considering the advisability of every step in the breaking sands. There was a fixed smile on the girl's lips, but her eyes were mirthless, almost vacant.

"So you've decided to go?" she said.

"Portlaw decides that sort of thing for me."

"It's a case of necessity?"

Malcourt answered lightly: "He intends to go. Who can stop a fat and determined man? Besides, the season is over; in two weeks there will be nobody left except the indigenous nigger, the buzzards, and a few cast-off summer garments—"

"And a few cast-off winter memories," she said. "You will not take any away with you, will you?"

"Do you mean clothes?"

"Memories."

"I'll take some."

"Which?"

"All those concerning you."

"Thank you, Louis." They had got that far. And a trifle farther, for her hand, swinging next his, encountered it and their fingers remained interlocked. But there was no change of expression in her pretty, pale face as, head bent, shoulder to shoulder with him, she moved thoughtfully onward along the dunes, the fixed smile stamped on her lips.

"What are you going to do with your memories?" she asked. "Pigeon-hole and label them? Or fling them, like your winter repentance, in the Fire of Spring?"

"What are you going to do with yours, Virginia?"

"Nothing. They are not disturbing enough to destroy. Besides, unlike yours, they are my first memories of indiscretions, and they are too new to forget easily, too incredible yet to hurt. A woman is seldom hurt by what she cannot understand."

He passed one arm around her supple waist; they halted; he turned her toward him.

"What is it you don't understand?"

"This."

"My kissing you? Like this?"

She neither avoided nor returned the caress, looking at him out of impenetrable eyes more green than blue like the deep sea under changing skies.

"Is this what you don't understand, Virginia?"

"Yes; that—and your moderation."

His smile changed, but it was still a smile.

"Nor I," he said. "Like our friend, Warren Hastings, I am astonished. But there our resemblance ends."

The eagle on the wet sands ruffled, shook his silvery hackles, and looked around at them. Then, head low and thrust forward, he hulked slowly toward the remains of the dead fish from which but now he had retired in the disgust of satiation.

Meanwhile Malcourt and Miss Suydam were walking cautiously forward again, selecting every footstep as though treading on the crumbling edges of an abyss.

"It's rather stupid that I never suspected it," she said, musing aloud.

"Suspected what?"

"The existence of this other woman called Virginia Suydam. And I might have been mercifully ignorant of her until I died, if you had not looked at me and seen us both at once."

"We all are that way."

"Not all women, Louis. Have you found them so? You need not answer. There is in you, sometimes, a flash of infernal chivalry; do you know it? I can forgive you a great deal for it; even for discovering that other and not very staid person, so easily schooled, easily taught to respond; so easily thrilled, easily beguiled, easily caressed. Why, with her head falling back on your shoulder so readily, and her lips so lightly persuaded, one can scarcely believe her to have been untaught through all these years of dry convention and routine, or unaware of that depravity, latent, which it took your unerring faith and skill to discover and develop."

"How far have I developed it?"

She bent her delicate head: "I believe I have already admitted your moderation."

He shivered, walking forward without looking at her for a pace or two, then halted.

"Would you marry me?" he asked.

"I had rather not. You know it."

"Why?—once again."

"Because of my strange respect for that other woman that I am—or was."

"Which always makes me regret my—moderation," he said, wincing under the lash of her words. "But I'm not considering you! I'm considering the peace of mind of that other woman—not yours!" He took her in his arms, none too gently. "Not yours. I'd show no mercy to you There is only one kind of mercy you'd understand. Look into my eyes and admit it."

"Yes," she said.

"But your other self understands!"

"Why don't you destroy her?"

"And let her die in her contempt for me? You ask too much—Virginia-that-I-know. If that other Virginia-that-I-don't-know loved me, I'd kill this one, not the other!"

"Do you care for that one, Louis?"

"What answer shall I make?"

"The best you can without lying."

"Then"—and being in his arms their eyes were close—"then I think I could love her if I had a chance. I don't know. I can deny myself. They say that is the beginning. But I seldom do—very seldom. And that is the best answer I can give, and the truest."

"Thank you.... And so you are going to leave me?"

"I am going North. Yes."

"What am I to do?"

"Return to your other self and forget me."

"Thank you again.... Do you know, Louis, that you have never once by hint or by look or by silence suggested that it was I who deliberately offered you the first provocation? That is another flicker of that infernal chivalry of yours."

"Does your other self approve?" he said, laughing.

"My other self is watching us both very closely, Louis. I—I wish, sometimes, she were dead! Louis! Louis! as I am now, here in your arms, I thought I had descended sufficiently to meet you on your own plane. But—you seem higher up—at moments.... And now, when you are going, you tell my other self to call in the creature we let loose together, for it will have no longer any counterpart to caress.... Louis! I do love you; how can I let you go! Can you tell me? What am I to do? There are times—there are moments when I cannot endure it—the thought of losing the disgrace of your lips—your arms—the sound of your voice. Don't go and leave me like this—don't go—"

Miss Suydam's head fell. She was crying.

* * * * *

The eagle on the wet beach, one yellow talon firmly planted on its offal, tore strip after strip from the quivering mass. The sun etched his tinted shadow on the sand.

When the tears of Miss Suydam had been appropriately dried, they turned and retraced their steps very slowly, her head resting against his shoulder, his arm around her thin waist, her own hand hanging loosely, trailing the big straw hat and floating veil.

They spoke very seldom—very, very seldom. Malcourt was too busy thinking; Virginia too stunned to realise that, it was, now, her other austere self, bewildered, humiliated, desperate, which was walking amid the solitude of sky and sea with Louis Malcourt, there beneath the splendour of the westering sun.

The eagle, undisturbed, tore at the dead thing on the beach, one yellow talon embedded in the offal.

Their black chair-boy lay asleep under a thicket of Spanish bayonet.

"Arise, O Ethiope, and make ready unto us a chariot!" said Malcourt pleasantly; and he guided Virginia into her seat while the fat darky climbed up behind, rubbing slumber from his rolling and enormous eyes.

Half-way through the labyrinth they met Miss Palliser and Wayward.

"Where on earth have you been?" asked Virginia, so candidly that Wayward, taken aback, began excuses. But Constance Palliser's cheeks turned pink; and remained so during her silent ride home with Wayward.

Lately the world had not been spinning to suit the taste of Constance Palliser. For one thing Wayward was morose. Besides he appeared physically ill. She shrank from asking herself the reason; she might better have asked him for her peace of mind.

Another matter: Virginia, the circumspect, the caste-bound, the intolerant, the emotionless, was displaying the astounding symptoms peculiar to the minx! And she had neither the excuse of ignorance nor of extreme youth. Virginia was a mature maiden, calmly cognisant of the world, and coolly alive to the doubtful phases of that planet. And why on earth she chose to affiche herself with a man like Malcourt, Constance could not comprehend.

And another thing worried the pretty spinster—the comings, goings, and occult doings of her nephew with the most distractingly lovely and utterly impossible girl that fate ever designed to harass the soul of any young man's aunt.

That Hamil was already in love with Shiela Cardross had become painfully plainer to her every time she saw him. True, others were in love with Miss Cardross; that state of mind and heart seemed to be chronic at Palm Beach. Gussie Vetchen openly admitted his distinguished consideration, and Courtlandt Classon toddled busily about Shiela's court, and even the forlorn Cuyp had become disgustingly unfaithful and no longer wrinkled his long Dutch nose into a series of white corrugations when Wayward took Miss Palliser away from him. Alas! the entire male world seemed to trot in the wake of this sweet-eyed young Circe, emitting appealingly gentle and propitiating grunts.

"The very deuce is in that girl!" thought Constance, exasperated; "and the sooner Garry goes North the better. He's madly unhappy over her.... Fascinating little thing! I can't blame him too much—except that he evidently realises he can't marry such a person—"

The chair rolled into the hotel grounds under the arch of jasmine. The orchestra was playing in the colonnade; tea had been served under the cocoa-nut palms; pretty faces and gay toilets glimmered familiarly as the chair swept along the edge of the throng.

"Tell the chair-boy that we'll tea here, Jim," said Miss Palliser, catching sight of her nephew and the guilty Circe under whose gentle thrall Hamil was now boldly imbibing a swizzle.

So Wayward nodded to the charioteer, the chair halted, and he and Constance disembarked and advanced across the grass to exchange amenities with friends and acquaintances. Which formalities always fretted Wayward, and he stood about, morose and ungracious, while Constance floated prettily here and there, and at last turned with nicely prepared surprise to encounter Shiela and Hamil seated just behind her.

The younger girl, rising, met her more than half-way with gloved hand frankly offered; Wayward turned to Hamil in subdued relief.

"Lord! I've been looking at those confounded alligators and listening to Vetchen's and Cuyp's twaddle! Constance wouldn't talk; and I'm quite unfit for print. What's that in your glass, Garry?"

"A swizzle—"

"Anything in it except lime-juice and buzz?"

"Yes—"

"Then I won't have one. Constance! Are you drinking tea?"

"Do you want some?" she asked, surprised.

"Yes, I do—if you can give me some without asking how many lumps I take—like the inevitable heroine in a British work of fiction—"

"Jim, what a bear you are to-day!" And to Shiela, who was laughing: "He snapped and growled at Gussie Vetchen and he glared and glowered at Livingston Cuyp, and he's scarcely vouchsafed a word to me this afternoon except the civility you have just heard. Jim, I will ask you how many lumps—"

"O Lord! Britain triumphant! Two—I think; ten if you wish, Constance—or none at all. Miss Cardross, you wouldn't say such things to me, would you?"

"Don't answer him," interposed Constance; "if you do you'll take him away, and I haven't another man left! Why are you such a dreadful devastator, Miss Cardross?... Here's your tea, James. Please turn around and occupy yourself with my nephew; I'd like a chance to talk to Miss Cardross."

The girl had seated herself beside Miss Palliser, and, as Wayward moved over to the other table, she gave him a perverse glance, so humourous and so wholly adorable that Constance Palliser yielded to the charm with an amused sigh of resignation.

"My dear," she said, "Miss Suydam and I are going North very soon, and we are coming to see your mother at the first opportunity."

"Mother expects you," said the girl simply. "I did not know that she knew Miss Suydam—or cared to."

Something in the gentle indifference of the words sent the conscious blood pulsing into Miss Palliser's cheeks. Then she said frankly:

"Has Virginia been rude to you?"

"Yes—a little."

"Unpardonably?"

"N-no. I always can pardon."

"You dear!" said Constance impulsively. "Listen; Virginia does snippy things at times. I don't know why and she doesn't either. I know she's sorry she was rude to you, but she seems to think her rudeness too utterly unpardonable. May I tell her it isn't?"

"If you please," said Shiela quietly.

Miss Palliser looked at her, then, succumbing, took her hand in hers.

"No wonder people like you, Miss Cardross."

"Do you?"

"How could I escape the popular craze?" laughed Miss Palliser, a trifle embarrassed.

"That is not an answer," returned Shiela, the smile on her red lips faintly wistful. And Constance surrendered completely.

"You sweet, cunning thing," she said, "I do like you. You are perfectly adorable, for one reason; for the other, there is something—a nameless something about you—"

"Quite—nameless," said the girl under her breath.

A little flash of mist confused Miss Palliser's eyesight for a moment; her senses warned her, but her heart was calling.

"Dear," she said, "I could love you very easily."

Shiela looked her straight in the eyes.

"What you give I can return; no more, no less—"

But already Constance Palliser had lifted the girl's smooth hand to her lips, murmuring: "Pride! pride! It is the last refuge for social failures, Shiela. And you are too wise to enter there, too sweet and wholesome to remain. Leave us our obsolete pride, child; God knows we need something in compensation for all that you possess."

Later they sipped their tea together. "I always wanted you to like me," said the girl. Her glance wandered toward Hamil so unconsciously that Constance caught her breath. But the spell was on her still; she, too, looked at Hamil; admonition, prejudice, inculcated precept, wavered hazily.

"Because I care so much for Mr. Hamil," continued the girl innocently.

For one instant, in her inmost intelligence, Miss Palliser fiercely questioned that innocence; then, convinced, looked questioningly at the girl beside her. So questioningly that Shiela answered:

"What?"—as though the elder woman had spoken.

"I don't know, dear.... Is there anything you—you cared to ask me?—say to me?—tell me?—perhaps—"

"About what?"

So fearless and sweet and true the gaze that met her own that Constance hesitated.

"About Mr. Hamil?"

The girl looked at her; understood her; and the colour mounted to her temples.

"No," she said slowly, "there is nothing to tell anybody.... There never will be."

"I wish there were, child." Certainly Constance must have gone quite mad under the spell, for she had Shiela's soft hands in hers again, and was pressing them close between her palms, repeating: "I am sorry; I am, indeed. The boy certainly cares for you; he has told me so a thousand times without uttering a word. I have known it for weeks—feared it. Now I wish it. I am sorry."

"Mr. Hamil—understands—" faltered Shiela; "I—I care so much for him—so much more than for any other man; but not in the way you—you are kind enough to—wish—"

"Does he understand?"

"Y-yes. I think so. I think we understand each other—thoroughly. But"—she blushed vividly—"I—did not dream that you supposed—"

Miss Palliser looked at her searchingly.

"—But—it has made me very happy to believe that you consider me—acceptable."

"Dearest child, it is evident that we are the unacceptable ones—"

"Please don't say that—or think it. It is absurd—in one sense.... Are we to be friends in town? Is that what you mean?"

"Indeed we are, if you will."

Miss Cardross nodded and withdrew her hands as Virginia and Malcourt came into view across the lawn.

Constance, following her glance, saw, and signalled silent invitation; Malcourt sauntered up, paid his respects airily, and joined Hamil and Wayward; Virginia spoke in a low voice to Constance, then, leaning on the back of her chair, looked at Shiela as inoffensively as she knew how. She said:

"I am very sorry for my rudeness to you. Can you forgive me, Miss Cardross?"

"Yes.... Won't you have some tea?"

Her direct simplicity left Virginia rather taken aback. Perhaps she expected some lack of composure in the girl, perhaps a more prolix acceptance of honourable amends; but this terse and serene amiability almost suggested indifference; and Virginia seated herself, not quite knowing how she liked it.

Afterward she said to Miss Palliser:

"Did you ever see such self-possession, my dear? You know I might pardon my maid in exactly the same tone and manner."

"But you wouldn't ask your maid to tea, would you?" said Constance, gently amused.

"I might, if I could afford to," she nodded listlessly. "I believe that girl could do it without disturbing her Own self-respect or losing caste below stairs or above. As for the Van Dieman—just common cat, Constance."

Miss Palliser laughed. "Shiela Cardross refused the Van Dieman son and heir—if you think that might be an explanation of the cattishness."

"Really?" asked Virginia, without interest. "Where did you hear that gossip?"

"From our vixenish tabby herself. The thin and vindictive are usually without a real sense of humour. I rather suspected young Jan Van Dieman's discomfiture. He left, you know, just after Garret arrived," she added demurely.

Virginia raised her eyes at the complacent inference; but even curiosity seemed to have died out in her, and she only said, languidly:

"You think she cares for Garret? And you approve?"

"I think I'd approve if she did. Does that astonish you?"

"Not very much."

Virginia seemed to have lost all spirit. She laughed rarely, nowadays. She was paler, too, than usual—paler than was ornamental; and pallor suited her rather fragile features, too. Also she had become curiously considerate of other people's feelings—rather subdued; less ready in her criticisms; gentler in judgments. All of which symptoms Constance had already noted with incredulity and alarm.

"Where did you and Louis Malcourt go this afternoon?" she asked, unpegging her hair.

"Out to the beach. There was nothing there except sky and water, and a filthy eagle dining on a dead fish."

Miss Palliser waited, sitting before her dresser; but as Virginia offered no further information she shook out the splendid masses of her chestnut hair and, leaning forward, examined her features in the mirror with minute attention.

"It's strange," she murmured, half to herself, "how ill Jim Wayward has been looking recently. I can't account for it."

"I can, dear," said Virginia gently.

Constance turned in surprise.

"How?"

"Mr. Malcourt says that he is practising self-denial. It hurts, you know."

"What!" exclaimed Constance, flushing up.

"I said that it hurts."

"Such a slur as that harms Louis Malcourt—not Mr. Wayward!" returned Constance hotly.

Virginia repeated: "It hurts—to kill desire. It hurts even before habit is acquired ... they say. Louis Malcourt says so. And if that is true—can you wonder that poor Mr. Wayward looks like death? I speak in all sympathy and kindness—as did Mr. Malcourt."

So that was it! Constance stared at her own fair face in the mirror, and deep into the pained brown eyes reflected there. The eyes suddenly dimmed and the parted mouth quivered.

So that was the dreadful trouble!—the explanation of the recent change in him—the deep lines of pain from the wing of the pinched nostril—the haunted gaze, the long, restless silences, the forced humour and its bitter flavour tainting voice and word!

And she had believed—feared with a certainty almost hopeless—that it was his old vice, slowly, inexorably transforming what was left of the man she had known so long and cared for so loyally through all these strange, confusing years.

From the mirror the oval of her own fresh unravaged face, framed in the burnished brown of her hair, confronted her like a wraith of the past; and, dreaming there, wide-eyed, expressionless, she seemed to see again the old-time parlour set with rosewood; and the faded roses in the carpet; and, through the half-drawn curtains, spring sunlight falling on a boy and a little girl.