II

Hindwood stared at him with a frown. He was contrasting this Ivan Varensky with the leader of men whose deeds of three years ago had so deeply stirred him. One picture stood out ineffaceably. It was of a sea of panic-stricken soldiers, patriotism forgotten, arms flung away, in wild retreat, and of Ivan Varensky driving forward alone, as though he, by his single courage, could turn back the enemy. And this was the man—the white knight of Russia, the scape-goat, the magician of words! Had he met him three years ago, he would have knelt to him. Now all he could do was to frown.

It was necessary to say something. He spoke gruffly. “You've chosen an odd method of returning. We had news you were dead.”

“I was,” the green eyes narrowed, “nearly. I'm always nearly dying. Isn't that so, Anna? And then I come back. This last time, as you observed, I had the discourtesy to forget. I was thinking of Santa. Actually I struggled to survive. Believe me, that's unlike me.”

The forbearance of his manner was rebuking. Making an effort to be genial, Hindwood held out his hand. “It's a strange way to meet. I've long been your admirer. It was a close call—as close as a man could have.”

Varensky winced as the powerful grip closed about his fingers. They were long and pointed, more like a woman's than a man's. “A close call!” He smiled. “You're American? It wasn't—not for me. I could tell you— But perhaps one day, when I've become past history, Anna will do that.”

As he mentioned his wife, he gave her a look at once tender and furtive—a look which acknowledged without rancor the truth of the situation. She started forward, but his eyes held her. She stopped half-way.

“However you return,” she said chokingly, “and however often, you know that I'm glad. It's the certainty that I shall lose you—that however often you return I shall never have you—”

She bowed her head. From the edge of the cliff, without a trace of emotion, the other woman watched her.

Tilting her face with his bruised fingers, Varensky regarded her earnestly. “As if I wasn't aware of that!” And then, “Let's be going.”

Side by side, but always separate, they moved across the downs. There was no backward glance. Hindwood followed them with his eyes till they sank into a hollow. The last he saw was the raw gold of her hair and the conical top of his pointed head, growing more distant above the bracken.

III

And I, too, have to apologize. I failed to keep my appointment.”

He swung round at the mockingly spoken words, to find that Santa had stolen up behind him. Until now he had had no time to notice her. His anger was so intense that it held him silent. After all that she had done and had intended to do to him, she had the effrontery to jest! Did she think that he was as much her dupe as the fool who had died for her in the woods of Vincennes?

But his anger was short-lived and left him sternly cold. She was changed. Her fastidious elegance was a thing of the past. She was commonly attired as any fisher-girl. Her cheap blouse was rent at the neck; its sleeves were stained and in tatters. Her rough skirt had been nearly trodden off. She was tom and disheveled. She had suffered even more from her adventure than had Varensky. Her hat lay crushed at her feet in the grass. With her wounded hands she “was doing her best to twine the thick coils of her hair into place. She stood confessed for what she was, a fugitive from justice. The wildness of the landscape made a fitting setting. She looked startlingly untamed. She might have passed for a peasant Ophelia, except that her gray eyes were calm and her manner nonchalant.

“There are a good many things, besides missing your appointment, for which you have to apologize.”

“I can explain—”

He cut her short. “Between you and me no explanations are necessary.”

She jerked back her head, flattening her hands against her sides like a soldier standing at attention. “Why not?”

He took his time to answer. “Because you're nothing to me.”

Her face went white, then flamed scarlet, as though he had struck her with his open palm. “Nothing to you!” She spoke slowly. “I, Santa Gorlof, am nothing to you! You're the first man to whom I ever offered my heart. I would lie down in the mud that you might walk over me. I'd let you beat me like a dog if I might only follow you. I'd starve that you might be fed, go thirsty that you might drink, break my body that you might not suffer. I would die if it would give you pleasure.” Seeing that her rhetoric was having no effect, she sank her voice. “When I could have escaped, I waited for you. I risked my freedom for one last sight of you.” She clutched at her breast, choking down a sob. “And you tell me that I'm nothing to you!”

He was determined to remain unmoved by her emotion. Regarding her stonily, he asked: “What right had you to believe that you were anything to me?”

She laughed forlornly. “No right at all.”

“If I had ever cared for you,” he continued, “in your present predicament it would all be ended.”

She raised her brows contemptuously. “Of course.”

“You see, I've found out the sort of woman you are.”

“What sort?”

“Need I recall?”

He turned away, searching hollows and clumps of bushes for bobbing heads of watchers. Her captors might be closing in on her. Her indifference to her danger was disconcerting. With eyes still fixed on the distant landscape, he revealed his thoughts.

“Your talk of love is paltry. It's tragic farce. You have a husband. You're liable to be jailed at any moment.”

He expected she would retort. When she maintained silence, he glanced down at his feet, ashamed of what he felt himself compelled to tell her.

“Love! If it were true, and if your affection were desired, you have no love to offer. Nothing that is you is yours. Your hours are numbered. Your body and your life are forfeit. The man who is your husband is leading the hue-and-cry against you. If you think you can persuade me to go to the scaffold for you, rid yourself of the thought. There'll be no repetition of the woods of Vincennes. The victim in that case was your lover; I'm not.” He met her eyes. “You never deceived me for a second. From the moment we left the Ryndam, I knew who it was had pushed Prince Rogovich overboard.”

“If you knew,” she asked quietly, “why didn't you have me arrested?”

“It was none of my business.”

“But you were kind after we'd landed. At the hotel you arranged to breakfast with me.”

“I couldn't bring myself to believe you were guilty.”

“And yet, after you had believed, you followed me to Seafold.”

“The detective instinct.” He spoke testily. “Morbid curiosity.”

“No.” She said it wistfully. Her face softened. “You followed me because, even against your will, you still cared for me. You pitied me. You were chivalrous. You refused to condemn me unheard. You hoped there was some mistake. You followed me to make sure.”

“And you've made me sure.” He rapped out the words. “Since you insist on the truth, I came to Seafold hoping to find you innocent. If I had I should have fought for you. Whereas—”

“Whereas?” she prompted nervously.

“I found you'd done to me what you've done to every other man who ever befriended you—betrayed me and had me lured into an ambush where, for all I know, you'd given orders for me to be shot.”

“But you weren't.”

“No thanks to you. Your husband was ahead of you, hidden in the bushes, waiting for you. If we hadn't given the signal that warned you—”

“But you gave it.” She spoke triumphantly. “I'd trapped you, and yet you didn't want me to be caught. To have shown generosity at a moment when you thought that I was threatening your life, you must still have been fond of me.”

“Thought!” He drew back from her, revolted by her insincerity. “You left no room for thought. You were diabolically explicit. You knew that I could prove your guilt. You meant to kill me in order that I might be silenced.”

Her eyes filled. She stretched out her arms beseechingly. They fell hopelessly as he retreated from her.

“Don't misjudge me,” she implored. “I'm a woman who's finished. A woman, as you reminded me, whose hours are numbered—my body and my life are forfeit. It's true what you said: nothing that I am belongs to me. If you like to put it that way, I'm a woman who has nothing to offer. And yet I love you—the first man with whom I was ever in love, now when it's too late. You don't believe me; you're thinking of the many others. Let it pass. I had to see you once more. I couldn't come to you; you were surrounded by my enemies. To persuade you to come to me, I had to trick you. Until it was safe to visit you, I had to have you held by force. I compelled Anna, Madame Varensky to—”

He made an impatient gesture. “Enough! I'm wondering to how many men you've made that speech before. I've heard all about your appeals to chivalry. If you were a man—— Unfortunately you're not, so I have a sentimental compunction about abandoning you. What are your plans? When I saw the ship I hoped you had escaped.”

“I had.”

“And you came back! Why?”

“Varensky was landing from the boat that had been sent to take me off.” She was laying claim to some obscure nobility, making a final bid for his admiration.

“The mist's clearing,” he said brusquely. “In another half-hour you'll be visible for miles. If you're seen here, you'll be taken.”

“I won't.”

“You think not?”

She smiled languidly. It was her arch, mysterious way of smiling that had first attracted him. “Why don't you go?” she whispered in her hoarse, parched voice. “You loathe and despise me. You grudge me every moment we're together. I've done what was right; I'm willing to pay the penalty. I've earned a rest. I'm tired—you can't guess how tired.”

Now that she wanted him to go, he gazed at her with a new interest. If the trackers were hot upon his trail, what would be his sensations? Would he be able to be courteous and to talk calmly? Whatever might be her crimes, she had courage. What if it were true that by some tortuous process of reasoning she did actually believe she had done right? And what if it were true that she had intended him no harm, but had only attempted to win him by violence? The uneasy doubt took shape in his mind that he might have misjudged her. It would be a splendid memory to have, if she were wrongly executed—this gleaming morning, the larks singing, the blue-patched sky, the valiant sun, the rosy-tinted dew, and himself fleeing from the forlornness of a woman! Every man's hand was against her. She believed she had done right.

He regarded her less coldly. She was perfect as on the day when all Europe had gone wild over her. And this masterpiece of loveliness, which had been known as Santa Gorlof, was doomed to be destroyed!

“Go.” She stamped her foot hysterically. “You torture me.”

He faced her obstinately. “What are you proposing? You've some plan in mind. Madame Varen-sky called this 'the road out.' Is it possible for you to take it?”

“I know a shorter route.”

“You're certain?”

“Please leave me. You must leave me. I'm a woman who has nothing to offer. You're a man who has everything to lose.”

He squared his lips. “I don't like the sound of this shorter route. I want to know more about it.”

As he made a step toward her, she dodged and broke from him, dashing toward the cliff. On the very edge he caught her. She struggled dangerously, but he stumbled back with her crushed against him.

“You little fool!”

She lay quiet, her face pressed against his cheek. Then she fell to sobbing.

“What difference would it make? Why wouldn't you let me do it?”

IV

Why wouldn't he? It was the question he himself was asking. He had done nothing humane in preventing her. He had merely spared his own feelings. If she had succeeded, he would have found himself in an ugly situation. He would have been suspected of a crime similar to hers. There would have been no evidence to hang him, but he could never have established his innocence. He looked down at the woman shuddering in his arms, for all the world as though he were her lover. He had been within an ace of inheriting her isolation.

“I didn't let you do it—” He hesitated. Then he took the plunge. “Because I intend to save you.”

She stirred. She glanced up at him. As her eyes met his, their expression of wonder gave way to one of gratitude. She strove to reach his lips, but he restrained her.

“Promise me you'll live.”

“If you'll help me.”

How much she implied oy “help me,” he did not stop to question.

“We've no time to lose.” He spoke hurriedly. “Where's the safest place of hiding?”

“My old one. A hut——”

“I know,” he interrupted. “I'll go ahead to make sure the way is clear; you follow at a distance. Keep me in sight. If I look back, take cover.”

Without more ado, he turned away, retracing his steps to the camp.

He attempted to walk jauntily, like a nature-lover who had risen early to enjoy the first freshness of the morning. Here and there he stooped to pluck a blackberry. He pulled a sprig of heather for his lapel. He flattered himself that, if he were being watched, his conduct was artistically normal.

For all his display of carelessness, he advanced warily. There was nothing in the billowy expanse of greenness that escaped him. Somewhere within a radius of four miles the Major was waiting to make his pounce. He might be crouched in the next patch of bracken. He might be lying behind the nearest mound. The dapper, gallant-appearing old gentleman, who bore such a striking resemblance to Lord Roberts, assumed the terror of nemesis in his imagination. He seemed everywhere and nowhere. He would pop up, suave and neatly bespatted, at the moment when he was least expected.

He gazed straight before him, not daring to look back, but he never lost consciousness of the fateful woman following him stealthily as a shadow. And always there was the memory of the other woman with the gentle eyes and shining hair.

He reached the camp. It looked lonely as a graveyard. Rows of hutments, bleached to a bluish whiteness, gleamed in the morning sunshine. The downs curled above it like an emerald wave on the point of breaking.

Passing along the bare avenue of silent dwellings he pushed open the door of Santa's place of refuge. Tiptoeing across the dusty floor, he knelt by the window, peering out.

Seconds ticked into minutes. Ten minutes elapsed, twenty, half an hour. There was no sign of life. He strove to calm his fears. If she had been caught, it simplified matters. But such arguments failed to pacify him. He pictured her as he had seen her on the Ryndam—a splendid animal, proud, fastidious, mildly contemptuous; and then as he had seen her that morning, broken, desperate, defiant.

Out there in the happy sunshine they might be carrying her away. They would drag her through the public streets as a criminal. They would lock her in a cell. They would hale her to a court to be gaped at. They would paw over her private life. They would pry into the intimacies of her love-affairs. Nothing that was hers would be sacred. Then, when the sport grew tedious, an old man, turned moralist by reason of decrepitude, would don a black cap and intrust her to the mercy of Almighty God.

He staged her arrest as though he had seen it happen. He had strolled straight through her pursuers' ambush. They had let him pass. Directly she had appeared, they had risen out of the brush. Twisting her arms behind her, they had snapped handcuffs on her slender wrists. She had struggled, sinking to the ground, faint with terror. They had jerked her to her feet, half carrying her, pushing her forward.

He raged impotently. What brutes men were! Nothing that she had done to his sex was bad enough. He thrust the vision from him. Each time it returned.

The door creaked. He leaped as if he had been shot. She pressed a finger to her lips. Coming close, so that he could feel the rise and fall of her bosom, “He's here,” she whispered.

V

Who?”

She was puzzled by his stupidity. Then, “You know,” she murmured. “He saw me in the distance and started to run toward me. I dropped to my knees and circled, approaching the hut from the back.”

“But he couldn't have recognized you.”

“He's on my track.”

“Alone?”

“I saw no one else.”

Hindwood's forehead wrinkled as he reckoned the cost. “If he comes alone, we can deal with him.”

“You mean—?” She did not finish her sentence.

He smiled sternly, thinking how far he had drifted from his moorings. “Scarcely. What made you ask?”

“He's my husband.” Her answer was enigmatic.

They held their breath. She was clinging to him. There had been no sound, nothing that could have warned them. Pushing her from him, he stole toward the window. Not fifty yards away, rigid like a hound at fault, stood the Major. Slowly, scarcely turning his head, he was running his eye along the double line of hutments. There was nothing in his expression that would tell what he had found. As though he sensed that he was watched, he started forward at a rambling pace. He tried no doors. He peered through no panes. His bearing was that of a mildly interested tourist who had stumbled on the camp by accident. He passed out of sight inoffensively, idly slashing at the grass.

It was some time before either of them dared to whisper. Then Hindwood straightened himself and drew back.

“He's gone.”

“To return,” she said tragically.

“If he returns alone, what of it?”

“He may catch me.”

“That doesn't follow. We may catch him instead.”

Her eyes grew long and narrow like a cat's. “What would we do with him?” she asked softly.

He regarded her warily. “He told me he loved you,” he said irrelevantly.

“Love wouldn't stand in his way—nothing personal. For what he holds to be right, he'd mutilate himself. He'd kill the thing he loved best.” She sank her voice. “We all would.”

“All—” He paused and began again. “With idealists like the Major, yourself and Varensky, human relations don't count. That was what you were trying to tell me, wasn't it? To achieve individual ideals, you'd sacrifice your own and everybody's happiness.”

Her expression became wooden as an idol's.

“You'd sacrifice mine, for instance?”

When she refused to answer, he made his inquiry more intrusive.

“My life, perhaps? No obligation of loyalty or gratitude would hinder you? Be honest.”

He recognized the struggle which his words had occasioned. Her sleepy look had vanished. She believed he was preparing to desert her. She was mustering the courage to invent a falsehood. Already her hands were lying. They were wandering over him, patting and caressing. He clasped them in his own, holding her at arm's length. Her eyes met his; they grew steady and absorbed him.

“Even though you were all I had, if your life caused suffering to children, I would kill you.”

He laughed at her solemnity over having told the truth.

“With you it's children; with the Major it's patriotism; with Varensky it's freedom. With me it's nothing. I follow no will-o'-the-wisp—which is lucky for you. You're terribly tired; get some rest while you can. I'll watch. I'm no idealist; you can trust me.”

VI

She had wrapped herself in her sable cloak and curled herself on the floor in the corner remotest from the window. When he judged she was sleeping, he stole to her side and stood gazing down. Her rags were hidden. Except for the weary disorder of her hair, she was almost the fashionable beauty of his Atlantic voyage.

He looked closer. Fatigue had uncovered something hidden in her countenance, traces of lost girlhood. Her body seemed smaller, her features less decided. The mask of intrigue had fallen. He caught a glimpse of the slim, pathetic child whom the Major had discovered, swaying like lilac-bloom in the perfumed dusk of the Hindoo temple.

Her feet peeped out from beneath the costly fur. Such doll's feet—so little to have come so long a journey! Her ankles were cut by the climb up the cliff. Her shoes were broken. As though the curtain had gone up in the theater of his brain, her feet began to act their story. He saw them tiny and brown, pattering about the shaded bungalow where the English tea-planter had lived with her Burmese mother. He saw them lost and wandering along the roads of India. He saw them in the temple, flashing like a swallow's flight across mosaic pavements. He followed all their progress, as they carried her through triumphs and bereavements to this moment.

She sighed and moved languidly. The robe fell back, revealing her hands. They were grazed and wounded.

Pouring water on his handkerchief from the pitcher, he bathed them gently. Just as he had finished, she opened her eyes.

“You won't leave me?”

“You'll find me sitting here,” he assured her, “just like this when you waken.”

Smiling faintly, she drowsed off obediently as a child.

All day she lay huddled in the corner, oblivious and spent with exhaustion. This must be the first long sleep she had snatched for several days and nights. Crouched beside the window, he guarded her. The Major might return. Varensky might send help. He himself could do nothing till after nightfall. The only food was the broken loaf of bread on the shelf beside the pitcher. He did not dare to touch it; when she woke, she would be hungry. The downs poured in a steady blaze of light. A fly drummed against the panes. On distant hillsides sheep were grazing; he envied them their freedom.

He could go if he liked. As the monotony dragged on, the temptation strengthened. He was under no obligation to make himself an outlaw. If he were to slip away, he would not rouse her. Within the hour he could be speeding up to London. Once there he would be of importance—the one man, at least in some statesmen's estimate, who could solve the European situation. For this woman he was sacrificing the happiness of millions. The fleshpots of Egypt could be his for the claiming. If he stayed and she were arrested, he would be held as her accomplice. Self-interest and altruism urged him to escape. He owed nothing to her. Women had always been for him an enemy country, forbidden and enticing. They had been what darkest Africa was to the explorer, a forest-world of treacherous loveliness. In imagination he had always been approaching their borders, fascinated by the gleam of uplifted faces. But like Varensky, whose life was a constant challenging of terror, in this one matter he had been cowardly. Since the first false woman of his early manhood—?

Why was it, this sudden clamor to possess the thing which all his years he had avoided? Was it because he felt the rising tide of loneliness and knew that the years were gaining on him? All this autumn day, as the silver clearness of morning faded into the deep gold of afternoon, he sat motionless, considering. Up to now he had maintained his pride, flattering himself that it was he who was doing the refusing. He had told himself arrogantly that he would succeed first—succeed immensely; after that he could have any woman for the asking. But could he? He was losing his faculty for sharing. Merely to marry a woman was not to win her. The illusion of ecstasy!

He glanced over to the corner where she lay sleeping. She was the symbol of the feminine half of the world whom he had disregarded. It was she who had roused him, with her parched voice and instinctive passion.

He studied her—her golden face, her cruel lips, her thin, sweet profile. He noticed the delicate firmness of her arms, the fineness of her throat, the tenderness of her molding. At every point she made him aware of his incompleteness.

Across the downs, like a fisherman drawing in his nets, the sun was setting. The hut was vague with dusk. Like the crescent of a young moon, Santa had wakened and was rising.

VII

You promised to save me.”

“I will if I can.”

She knotted her hands in mental anguish.

“You must. Any moment he may return. Have you thought of nothing?”

Leaning across his shoulder she lifted the ragged curtain, peering out at the fading landscape; as she gazed, her face stiffened and her eyes became fixed in a leaden stare. Not more than thirty yards distant, with his back toward them, the Major was standing. He had followed their trail still closer.

“We can't escape,” she panted. “He'll be there all night, to-morrow, forever.”

“We can. Stop here and trust me.”

Rising stealthily, leaving the door ajar behind him, he slipped out of the hut. In the twilight he halted, breathing in the sweet evening fragrance. Without further secrecy, he strode toward the Major.

“Good evening. I've been expecting you.”

At the first word the Major spun round, alertly on the defensive.

“I have your prisoner,” he continued. “I found I had no taste for being added to her list of victims. I'll be glad if you'll take her off my hands. She's in there.” He jerked his thumb across his shoulder.

The Major eyed him fiercely. “How d'you mean, you were expecting me?”

Hindwood laughed. “I caught sight of you last night in Varensky's garden and this morning on the downs. I didn't let you know, because there were things I was anxious to investigate.”

“For instance?”

“The purpose of her game.”

“And you've satisfied yourself?”

“At the risk of my life—yes. When you warned me against being romantic, I thought you were merely jealous. Fortunately or unfortunately, whichever way you like to put it, I know now that everything you told me was correct.”

“Humph!”

The Major twirled his mustaches thoughtfully.

In the last of the daylight he looked like a lean, white cat.

His coolness began to wear on Hindwood's nerves. “I suppose your men are hidden. Let's make an end.”

“I have no men.” The Major spoke slowly. “You forget that this woman is my wife. I wished to spare her as much as possible by making the arrest myself!” His eyes narrowed shrewdly. “How did you manage to secure her?”

“Luck. She had an accident. It's too long a story. She can't get away. I'm through; I've done my share.”

As he turned to go, the older man stretched out a delaying hand. His iron discipline wavered. “It's not a cheerful task. If you'll be so good as to stay—”

“If you feel like that—”

“I daren't allow myself to feel. It's something I owe my country.”

As though afraid that he would weaken, the Major set out at a run across the turf. Outside the hut he waited. As Hindwood caught up with him, he whispered:

“Two men against one woman! For an old soldier it isn't gallant.”

He was on the point of entering, when he felt himself flung violently forward. Hindwood's arm was crooked about his throat, shutting off his breath. Bursting into the hut, he was hurled to the floor and found himself struggling in the darkness. He was being pressed down and down. A voice spoke, the accents of which a minute ago had been friendly.

“Close the door. Get something to bind him. Anything that will hold. Tear strips off your dress.”

VIII

It was over. The Major had been trussed and gagged. He had been handcuffed with his own manacles. His revolver had been removed and his pockets searched. He leaned propped against the wall like a jointed doll, his body making an exact right angle with his legs. The angry vigilance of his eyes was his only sign of life. There was no means of making a light, even if it had been safe to employ it. Now that the fight was ended, they sat staring into the gloom, anonymous as three shadows.

It was Hindwood who broke the silence. “I've been guilty of an outrage, Major; I guess that's what you'd like to tell me. But you gave me no choice. Where I come from, women and children are held sacred. It was up to some man to protect her.”

He paused instinctively, as though he expected a reply. He looked to Santa where she crouched, motionless and scarcely discernible, in her corner. What were they thinking, this husband and wife, so brutally reunited? His sense of discomfort urged him to continue.

“Don't run off with the idea that I approve of what she's done. And I'm not in love with her. If she were a man, I don't suppose I'd raise a finger to save her. But she's a woman: inconsistently, that makes all the difference. I couldn't stand for seeing her dragged away to the kind of shame—”

Again he paused. The lack of response was maddening. Scrambling to his feet, he bent over the Major.

“To be frank, now that I've got you, I don't know what to do with you. If you'll promise to keep quiet, I'll remove the gag.”

“No.” Santa had not stirred. In the darkness she was little more than a voice. “Let me speak while he's forced to listen. Put him where I can see him.”

Taking his prisoner by the shoulders, Hindwood dragged him to the window. With a jerk he tore the ragged curtain from its nails. The downs were a sea of purple dusk. The moon hung like a lantern in an unruffled sky. Against the square of glass, the Major's face showed hawk-like.

“You've changed.” She spoke softly. “Do you remember when last we parted? On the docks at Calcutta. It hurt. Since then we've both gone down the ladder. For both of us it was the end of goodness. I must have known it. I waved till long after you were out of sight; then I wept till my heart was shriveled up. How long I've waited to tell you what you've made me suffer! You made me feel that I'd never been your wife, only a half-caste plaything. But you'd put a white soul into my body. It was a greater wickedness than anything I have done. Now that I'm what you've made me, father of my dead child, you seek me out to be my judge.”

Her hoarse voice died away. Like the protest of an uneasy conscience, the Major's handcuffs clinked together.

“You think that you're just,” she began again. “You come of a race which admires justice. Ah, but justice is not kindness! You knew what I was when you brought me from the temple—a wanton slave-girl. What had I learned of righteousness? It wasn't for my virtue that you bought me. It was for my pomegranate lips, my golden body, my little, caressing hands. Afterward, as an incentive to desire, it pleased you to bring the soul into my eyes. You made me long to be perfect. You seemed so strong and wise; I wanted to be like you. Without you I was afraid. You were my God. I felt brave when I touched you.”

Her voice sank. “After the little one came, I was no longer frightened. He was so nearly white. He was yours and mine. My blood seemed cleansed. I saw the world through the innocence of his eyes. The evil of the East ceased to call to me. But when he was killed and you put me from you—— Murderer of a woman's faith,” she addressed the silent face, “the soul in me was dying.”

She rocked in the shadows. “My crimes are yours, and you came to condemn me. You robbed me of everything but my body. My heart was famished; to feed it, I sold my beauty at a price. At first, for men's money; then, for their honor; at last, for their lives.” She had risen. “You wonder why for their lives? They were men like you, outwardly just, who destroyed belief in goodness. Because of men like you women's hearts are broken and children go naked.”

Hindwood leaped to his feet, blocking her path. She leaned past him, staring down into the bandaged face.

“Oh, husband without pity, god whom I worshipped, I burn in hell because of your justice.”

Slipping to her knees, she came into the square of light. “Am I not beautiful? Is there another like me? Would it not have been happier to have been kind? See what you have spoiled.”

IX

There was the rustling of footsteps in the grass outside. Letting in a flood of moonlight, the door was pushed gently open.

“May we enter?”

Without waiting for a reply, a man padded noiselessly across the threshold. By his peaked head and the litheness of his body, Hindwood recognized him as Varensky. Behind him, with the mildness of attendant angels, Anna and the Little Grandmother followed. Just inside the room he halted.

“What's this?”

The bound face in the square of window had riveted his attention.

“Her husband.”

“But why—?”

Hindwood spoke again. “He had come to take her to be hanged.”

The pale face smiled contemptuously. “Hanging's only a way of dying. Was that any reason for making him suffer?”

Without further argument, taking command of the situation, he stepped quickly to the Major's side. Stooping, he cut the bonds and removed the gag.

“You're free—free to go where you like and to get us all into trouble. We shall be here for at least an hour, so you'll have time. I landed without permission in your England this morning. That's a cause for police interference. My name's Ivan Varensky.”

The Major rose painfully, blinking at the lean, green-eyed stranger as though he had discovered in him a jester. “There are still the handcuffs,” he muttered.

When the handcuffs had been knocked off, Varen-sky repeated, “You're free to go.”

The Major shook himself and resumed his strutting air, like a brave old rooster who had all but had his neck wrung. “If it makes no difference, I'll stay.”

With his left eye shut and his head on one side, Varensky regarded him comically. “No difference! It may. You're a secret service agent; I'm a revolutionary. You uphold laws; I defy them. You're the servant of force; I hate every form of compulsion. What difference it makes depends on yourself—whether you propose to stay as a spy or as a man of honor.”

“As a sportsman who abides by the rules of the game.”

Varensky shrugged his narrow shoulders. “As a sportsman who hunts women?” He turned tenderly to Santa. “You're famished. We'll cover up the window and make a light.”

When candles which they had brought had been kindled and the meal spread, Santa and Hindwood sat down on the floor, facing each other. While they ate there was dead silence. Hindwood kept catching glimpses of her eyes. What was to be the end of her? Her expression was stunned. They both knew what this silence betokened: when the meal was over, her fate was to be decided. He was aware of each separate personality, as though each were making an effort to explain itself. What was to be hoped for from the verdict of such a jury? Every one in the hut, except Anna and himself, was a fanatic. He did not try to see their faces; all he saw was their hands as they ministered to him. The hands of Varensky, half clown's, half martyr's. The wrinkled hands of the old noblewoman, worn with service, who had lived with outcasts and spent her years in exile. The hands of Anna, guilty with yearning.

Varensky spoke without looking up. It was as though he were carrying on a conversation already started. “We can't restore life, so what right have we to destroy it? To be merciful—that's the only way.”

His green eyes sought the Major's. “We could have killed you to-night—but we didn't. Have you wondered why? By letting you go, we've put ourselves in your power. To-morrow you can drag us all to jail. You're a hard man. You exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. You came here to-night to exact a life. If we had judged you by your own standards, we should have been justified in giving you no quarter. If we had, what good would it have done? You'd only have been dead. And if you'd managed to capture Santa, what good would that have done? To have had her executed wouldn't have made her a better woman.”

He reached out and took her unwilling hand, bending back the fingers one by one. “They're beautiful. See how cleverly they work. There's not a scientist living can reproduce their mechanism. No one knows how they grew to be like that.”

His tone became tender. “Santa's been bad. She's been treacherous and cruel: a faithless wife and a menace. Merely to punish her wouldn't undo her evil. Only she can do that.”

For the first time the Major spoke. “At what are you driving?”

Varensky made no attempt to answer him. He seemed not to have heard. He sat cross-legged on the floor, folding and unfolding Santa's fingers, while his grotesque shadow squatted on the wall behind him. He looked like a kindly, embarrassed boy, trying to say something to the sulky girl so that it should not sound too wounding.

“I wonder whether Santa's husband ever saw a woman when she was dead. There's no light in her eyes. She can't say that she's sorry. Last week I saw hundreds in the ditches about Kiev. They weren't lovely. We mustn't let our Santa become like that.”

He turned to the Major with a slow smile. “Must we? You wouldn't like to think of the woman you had loved—”

The Major took a step into the room and stood biting his lips, glooming down at Varensky.

“You and I, sir, view our duty from hostile standpoints. I care for this woman infinitely more than you can ever care. But I care still more for my country. She's betrayed it a score of times. Shall I, because I am her husband, stand by and allow her to betray it? Had I accomplished the purpose that brought me here to-night, my heart would have been broken. To have put handcuffs on her wrists and to have sworn away her life, do you think it would have cost me nothing? The very judge who sentenced her would have shunned me.”

The Little Grandmother looked up. She spoke gruffly. “And what would have been the use of your suffering? Society would have been revenged. It would have washed its hands, like Pontius Pilate. It would have smiled smugly, believing she was wrong and it was right. It would have gone on its way, manufacturing more criminals like her. The old evils that have made her what she is would have continued, while she—” She snapped her fingers furiously. “Like the women in the ditches about Kiev.”

When the room had grown silent, Varensky covered the Major with his mocking stare.

“You must excuse our Little Grandmother. She feels these things intensely. More than half her years have been spent in prison.”

The Major pulled himself together. “She needs no excusing. What is it that you want of me?”

X

Santa's life. It's of no use to you.” He smiled in the midst of his earnestness. “I'm a boy begging for a broken watch. You were going to throw it away. I have dreams that I could repair it.”

The Major twitched irritably. “And you talk like a boy. How can I give you what doesn't belong to me? At every port in Europe the police are watching. For me to forgive her wouldn't help. It isn't against me that she's offended; it's against the laws of civilization.”

“I know.” Varensky nodded soothingly. “You're only one of the many agents of social vengeance. What I ought to have asked you was to give me the part of her life that does belong to you. She's in your clutches. Let her escape. Keep silent and drop your pursuit.”

“And if I do?”

Varensky tucked his legs closer under him and bent forward. “Perhaps I could turn her into a saint.” A note of passionate pleading crept into his voice. “She loves children. It was how her wickedness started. She was blind and mistaken, and all her crimes were committed for children. A woman who loves children must be good. She's done abominable things. She could become magnificent if she would do good with an equal violence.”

The Major glanced at the subject of these prophecies, sitting in their midst, rebelliously silent. He said wearily: “Mere words! You offer me no proof!”

The white face seemed to grow till it filled the room. The green eyes glowed like emeralds. They were uncanny and hypnotic. Language came in a torrent. “It isn't her body—it's her soul. If she were to die now, what would happen to her? I tried to save the soul of a nation. Let me do for Santa what I couldn't do for Russia—prove that mercy restores where punishment destroys. There's been too much killing. The world grows worse instead of better. It's been going on for ages, this hanging and guillotining and bludgeoning. It's reformed nothing. It's the might is right of the jungle, the justice of apes and cavemen. Revenge, whether it's carried out by tooth and claw or by law-courts and armies, never heals anything; it always leaves a bruise. The face of Europe is bruised beyond recovery by our last display of justice. Its fields are rotten with corpses. Shall we add one more to the many—a woman's?”

He paused, trembling like a leaf. When the Major only frowned, he sank back exhausted.

“If you'd seen what I've seen—” His head sagged stupidly. “If you'd seen what I've seen—miles of men, all slaughtered; women dead of starvation, children hunting in packs like wolves. And all because there's no mercy. If you'd seen, you couldn't kill anything.”

The candles ceased to gutter. Shadows huddled motionless. The very silence seemed accused.

Hindwood rose. He could endure the tension no longer. “I know nothing about her soul and not much about her guilt. All I know is that she's a woman at the end of her tether who's been handed one of the rawest of raw deals. That the world's been hard on her won't excuse her. We can't alter the world over night. If she's caught, as she may be at any moment, it'll be all up with her. I don't care what she's done or how much I lose by it, I'm not going to stand by and see her taken.”

The Major swung round. “Nor am I. But how to avoid it?”

Hindwood showed his suspicion of this sudden conversion. “Tell me,” he answered cautiously, “have you handed in any reports, I mean officially—about my knowledge of Santa?”

“Beyond the fact that you crossed on the same boat with her, you've not been mentioned.”

“And there's no one in your service, besides yourself, who has the least idea of her whereabouts?”

“No one.”

“Then it can be managed.”

He was dimly conscious of the pale expectancy of the faces lifted up to him. He felt that he was on the edge of a whirlpool into which he was being slowly dragged. Even at this last moment he made an effort to resist it. Then it seemed to him that in the heart of its eddies he saw a woman. She grew distinct; her face was Anna's.

“Let me explain,” he said. “I'm neither humanitarian nor idealist. I have no fantastic hopes of turning sinners into saints. I'm head of a group of American financiers, and I'm in Europe to employ its starving peoples. Don't misunderstand me. The result of my mission may be philanthropic, but its purpose is to make a profit. Since the war Europe's become a bargain-counter where everything's exposed for sale—everything except food. I can supply food. With food I can purchase, for a fraction of their value, railroads, factories, labor. I tell you this so that you may not doubt me when I say that I have it in my power to protect her. Once out of England, no escaping criminal could find a safer place of refuge than in my company. I have influence with all governments; with food I can stop revolution. None of them dares suspect me. I propose that I should take Santa with me. I travel on diplomatic passports; with me she'll have no trouble in crossing frontiers.”

The silence that greeted his offer lengthened. At a loss to account for it, he glanced from face to face.

“Have I offended?”

It was Santa who replied. Leaping up in their midst, tattered and disheveled, she threatened them like dogs whom she would beat aside.

“Beasts!” A sob caught her breath. “Is it impossible even for you, who call yourselves my friends, to believe any good of me? I swear before heaven he has no love for me.”

XI

Back in London he lost no time in completing arrangements for departure. Every boat that left for France without him lessened Santa's chance of safety. And yet, though he worked frantically, canceling appointments and clearing up correspondence, he couldn't bring home to himself the reality of the situation. The hut on the downs and all that had happened there seemed something that he had read or imagined. Only the face of Anna stood out in memory, clear-cut and actual. It seemed impossible to believe that he, Philip Hindwood, was in league with revolutionaries. That he was in league was proved to him when he set about procuring the passport and visÉs necessary for Santa to accompany him. By the time he obtained them, he had abused confidence and perjured himself beyond hope of pardon. They were made out in the name of “Edith Jones, spinster; American-born subject; aged thirty years; confidential secretary to Philip Hindwood, whom she is accompanying.” All her permits were marked Special and Diplomatic. It wasn't until the bustle was over and he was seated in the train for Dover, that the true proportions of his entanglement dawned on him.

At Dover she was to meet him. That had been the understanding. From then on, day in, day out, he would never be without her. No matter what strange country he traversed, she would sit beside him, reminding him of his complicity in her crimes. He would have to talk with her, eat with her, pretend to consult with her, just as if she were what he had claimed her to be—his confidential secretary. Would she have the sense to act discreetly? Would she expect him to make love to her? He glowered out of the window at the fleeting landscape. Any folly was possible to a woman with her record.

What made him most furious was the easy way in which he had allowed her to twist him round her fingers. It was the woods of Vincennes all over again. He was going into disordered countries, where governments were toppling and anarchy was rife. When she felt herself beyond the reach of danger, what was to prevent her from getting rid of him? Russia, if he got so far, was the kind of nightmare in which anything might happen. In Russia murder was one of the fine arts. He remembered Anna's suspicion that Santa was a Bolshevist agent. It added nothing to his comfort.

He had given way to idealism. It was the madness of a moment. It was listening to Varensky that had worked the mischief. Varensky had said something about idealism. What was it? That idealism was the vanishing point—the last outpost between Man and Eternity. His words came back.

“When you gaze up a railroad track, there's always a point in the infinite distance where, just before they vanish, the parallel rails seem to join. If a train were ever to reach that point, it would mean death. Life's like that—a track along which we travel on the parallel rails of possibility and desire. The lure of the idealist is to overtake the illusion, where possibility and desire seem to merge, and the safety of the journey ends.”

For him the safety of the journey had ended the moment it had started. If Varensky had meant anything by the vanishing point, he had meant that death is the unconscious goal of all idealists. Hind-wood shrugged his shoulders. It seemed highly probable when you took Santa with you on your travels.

The smell of the sea was in the air. They were slowing down, grinding their way to the docks through the town of Dover.

He didn't want to see her. He would make no effort to find her. She might have been prevented from joining him—perhaps arrested.

After the train had halted, he took his time. No one whom he recognized was on the platform. Directing a porter to attend to his baggage, he went quickly to the embarkation office to get his permit for going aboard. As he was entering, he felt his arm touched timidly, and turned.

“I'm here.”

“I see you are.”

“Didn't you expect me?”

He made an effort to act courteously. “Of course. There are formalities to be gone through. You'd better stick close to me. Don't attract attention. Let me do the talking.”

They fell into line behind a queue of passengers, winding slowly toward a table where officials were receiving and inspecting passports. He stood well in front of her, doing his best to hide her. When his turn came and the official held out his hand, he presented her passport with his own perfunctorily.

“Mine and my secretary's.”

The official was on the point of returning them, when a stockily-built man leaned across his shoulder and whispered something. Both of them looked up, staring hard at Santa.

“Which is Miss Jones?” the official asked.

“This lady at my side.”

“So you're Miss Jones, an American citizen?”

Before she could reply, Hindwood had interposed. “I've already told you she's Miss Jones. If you'll look, you'll see that her passport's marked Diplomatic as well as mine.”

The two men consulted together in lowered tones. Then the passport was O.K.'d and restored.

Picking it up, together with the embarkation permits, Hindwood strolled leisurely towards the gangplank. Directly they were on board he hurried Santa to her cabin and shut the door.

“You'll stay here till we sight France. I'm giving no one else the opportunity for suspecting a likeness.”