"How the world seems made for each of us;
How all we perceive and know in it
Tends to some moment's product,—thus,
When the soul declares itself; to wit,
By its fruit: the thing it does."
—Browning.

Quita lacked courage to appear again in public till the dinner bugle sounded. Garth was her promised partner: and she found him awaiting her just outside her tent.

"My turn now, dear lady," he said, pressing her fingertips against his side, as she took his proffered arm. "It has been a blank afternoon for me; but in revenge, I mean to keep you all the evening."

"You are presumptuous, as always!" she answered with admirable lightness. "Your claim ends with dessert."

"Quite so. But you are generous; and I can trust the rest to you, since you know how much I want it."

She smiled, as in duty bound. But to-night the man's facile gallantry revolted her as it had never yet done. She wondered how she had endured it these many months.

The instant they entered the long tent her eyes sought and found the thing they craved: though the sight of Lenox in his accustomed place between the Desmonds reawakened her smouldering jealousy of Honor, and gave the lie to her amazing instant of revelation. But once during the meal she encountered her husband's eyes. It was as if he had put out a hand and touched her; and her partner's veiled love-making became a meaningless murmur at her ear. Yet the surface of her brain travelled mechanically along the beaten track of dinner-table talk: and Garth, finding her gentler and more serious than her wont, deemed his hour of triumph very near at hand. Direct encouragement, in the face of his hidden knowledge, had strengthened his conviction that for many weeks she had been stifling her true feelings; that one touch at the right moment would suffice to lift the veil, to bring her at last into his arms. Beyond that moment of mastery he did not choose to look. For to-night passion had elbowed prudence out of the field. He had claimed her for the evening; and he anticipated great things from the next two hours under the stars.

At these informal camp dinners men and women left the table together; only habitual card-players remaining behind to tempt fortune until the small hours. Quita's hope had been that Desmond might come to her aid. But he had made up a rubber of whist; and to her dismay, she saw Lenox and Honor depart without him. Garth, who also noted their movements, carefully led her round to the far side of a blazing bonfire, piled ten feet high on this last night of Arcadia; and with a suppressed sigh she resigned herself to an evening of comic songs and personalities; and decided that a headache must rescue her, if no other champion were forthcoming.

It was a clear night of stars. The moon had not yet risen; though a herald brightness gave news of her coming. No least whisper of wind stirred the tree-tops. Sun-baked fir branches crackled and snapped like fairy musketry; and many-hued flames,—rose and saffron, heliotrope and sea-green,—played hide-and-seek among them, flinging inverted shadows on faces nearest the blaze.

Human beings break into song round a bonfire as naturally as birds after a shower of rain, and for those who see in such a fire no mere holocaust of dead twigs, but the Red Flower of the Jungle, the symbol and spirit of wild life, this spontaneous minstrelsy has a charm peculiarly its own. A charm of the simplest, certainly; for at camp-fires the banjo reigns supreme; and the aptest songs are those that 'rip your very heartstrings out' and offer fine facilities for effervescing between the verses.

Already a remarkable assortment of these had challenged the winking stars; and Quita was encouraging the requisite headache, while Garth contemplated the suggestion of a stroll towards the lake, when Michael Maurice came up to them.

"Quita, chÉrie, they have sent me to ask if you will sing. I have my fiddle here for accompaniment."

She hesitated. A rare shyness, born of the afternoon's fiasco, was still upon her.

"Who sent you?" she asked, smiling up at him.

"Colonel Mayhew, and several others." He bent lower. "Tu es trop fatiguÉe apres ce vilain polo?"

"Non, ce n'est pas Ça . . . mais . . ."

"Do, Miss Maurice, please, do," urged an enthusiastic young civilian on her left. "A woman's voice, especially yours, would be a rare treat after our promiscuous shouting."

And on her other side Garth, pressing closer, whispered his plea.

"Don't disappoint me. It is ages since I last heard you sing."

Without answering either, she touched her brother's arm. "Tune up,
Michel," she said low and hurriedly. "I have thought of a song."

Garth murmured his thanks with unusual empressement. Her instant acquiescence had both moved and flattered him; and his hopes rode high. As a matter of fact, she had not even heard his request. She had simply obeyed an impulse, as in most crises of her life;—an impulse so peremptory that it seemed almost a command from Beyond.

"What song is it to be?" Maurice asked, when the tuning process was complete.

"Swinburne's 'Ask Nothing More.'"

He raised his eyebrows. "A man's song?"

"Yes. But you know I often sing it; and I want to . . . to-night."

"Qu'y a-t-il, petite soeur?" he asked, for her manner puzzled him.

"Rien . . . rien de tout. Commence."

And he played the soft chords, pregnant with pleading, that usher in the song.

A moment later, Lenox, leaning back in a canvas chair, sat upright, and took the cigar from his lips.

"A woman singing? Jove—it's Quita!" he added under his breath. Then he remained motionless, straining his eyes for a sight of her between the dancing flames.

Clear and unfaltering her voice soared into the night; and as the song swept on, through pleading to impassioned longing, the whole awakened heart of her took fire from the poet's faultless phrases; till, in the last verse, it spoke straightly and simply to her husband, as though they two stood alone in the interstellar spaces of the universe.

"I who have love, and no more,
Give you but love of you, sweet;
He that hath more, let him give;
He that hath wings let him soar.
Mine is the heart at your feet . . .
Here that must love you . . . love you, to live!"

The last stupendous chords crashed into silence; and the fall of a charred twig sounded loud in the pause that followed. Then there came from the shadowy circle of listeners no clatter of hands and voices, but a low disjoined murmur;—the very attar of applause.

But by that time Quita was making her way blindly through the outskirts of the crowd into the blessed region of darkness and stars.

For, as the last words left her lips, the full apprehension of her act and its possible consequences submerged her in a red-hot wave of shame and self-consciousness; and before Garth had recovered himself sufficiently to rise and make the request that hovered on his lips, she was gone. For a space he sat still, lost in an amazement that swelled to exultation as the conviction grew in him that at last, after long and laudable repression, her heart had spoken, indirectly, yet unmistakably; that now, scandal or no scandal, he must make her altogether his.

And while he sat stunned to inaction by the vital issues at stake, Quita hurried on toward the temple, with no purpose in her going save to escape from the consciousness of human presence. She stood still at length, and wrung her hands together.

"Oh, but it was folly—worse than folly! He will only think or hateful,—theatrical. He will never understand."

Yet if, by miraculous chance, he did understand . . . what then? She held her breath and waited; till the night seemed alive with voices that laughed her to scorn.

The new-risen moon hung low as if caught and tangled among the tree-tops of the forest that broke up her golden disc in fantastic fashion. Away there by the bonfire some one else was singing now; a song with a boisterous chorus. Her mad impulse had simply been added to the mass of ineffectual things that form the groundwork of our rare successes.

Suddenly she started, and raised her head. The sound she desired yet dreaded was close at hand. He was coming to her. He must have understood. And because she needed all her courage to face him, she did it at once; for nothing saps courage like hesitation.

Then her heart stood still; a chill aura swept through her and she shivered. The dark figure nearing her was not Lenox. It was Garth.

But that all power of initiative seemed gone from her, she must have turned and fled. Instead she stood her ground, without motion or speech; and he, still misreading her, held out his arms.

"Quita . . . darling . . ." he began, his voice thick with passion.

But her name on his lips roused her like a pistol-shot.

"Go back . . . please go back," she cried imperatively. "I came away because I wanted . . . to be alone."

"But I thought . . ."

"I can't help what you thought! If you have any—respect for me at all, you will do what I ask."

"Of course. Only I shall see you again to-night. I must."

"No . . . no. Not to-night."

"To-morrow then?"

But she had already left him; and for his part, he must needs return the way he came,—frustrated, yet not enlightened; cursing, in no measured terms, the unfathomable ways of women. No doubt she was upset, unstrung by the knowledge of all that her confession implied; and woman-like, showed small regard for his consuming impatience to possess her. But to-morrow he would ride home with her. And after that—the Deluge!

Quita left alone again went forward with lagging feet, and a heart emptied of hope. Her own disappointment crowded out all thought of Garth's unusual behaviour; till renewed steps behind her suggested the astonishing possibility that he had dared to disregard her request, and followed her, in spite of all. The suggestion roused not fear, but anger, and the militant spirit of independence that circumstances had so fostered in her.

She knew now that she hated him, as we only hate those whom we have wronged. It was intolerable that he should persecute her against her wish; and she swung round sharply, with words of pitiless truth on her lips.

But the night seemed marked for the unexpected:—and now it was joy incredible that fettered her tongue and her feet, while her husband hastened forward, his face clearly visible in the growing light.

"I followed that fellow when he went after you," he said bluntly, anger smouldering in his tone. "And I saw him leave you. Did you send him away?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I didn't want him."

"Does that apply to me also?"

"No . . . please stay."

There fell a silence pregnant with things unutterable. Lenox came closer.

"What possessed you to sing that song,—in that way—Quita?"

It was the first time he had spoken her name, and she turned from him, pressing her fingers against flaming cheeks.

"Oh, I am burnt up with shame! I feel as if I had told all of them."

"Told them—what?"

"Mon Dieu! Will you compel me to say everything?"

She flung out both hands, and he caught and crushed them till she winced under the pressure. Then, holding her at arm's-length, he looked searchingly into her eyes.

And while they stood so—in this their first instant of real union, that dwarfed the years between to a watch in the night—each was aware of the other's answering heart; and in each, love burnt with so flame-like a quality that neither speech nor touch was needed to seal the intimacy of contact.

At length he drew her nearer.

"Does it frighten you now when I look right into you?" he asked, an odd vibration in his voice.

"No . . . no. I am only afraid you may not see deep enough."

He drew a great breath.

"Thank God for that. But tell me,—for I am still in the dark,—how on earth has such a miracle come to pass?"

Her low laugh had a ring of inexpressible content.

"Dearest, and blindest! Did it never occur to you that you could not have laid a surer trap to win me than by just keeping clear of me, and living in . . . that Mrs Desmond's pocket?"

He shook his head, smiling down at her. Her old subtle charm with this strange new tenderness superadded, was working like an elixir in his veins.

"But what does the how of it matter, after all?" she went on, leaning closer, and speaking low and fervently. "Isn't it enough that I love you with all there is of me . . . Eldred; that I ask you to believe me, and to make me . . . your very wife. There: you have compelled me to say everything! Are you satisfied now?"

To such a question he could find no answer in words. But his silence was cardinal. He put an arm round her, straining her close, and with a sigh of sheer rapture she lifted her face to his.

Their eyes met. Then their lips; and Eldred Lenox entered into a knowledge that he dreamed not of. The whole soul of his wife came to him in that kiss; and for a long minute ecstacy held them.

Then he released her, slowly . . . reluctantly.

"Shall we sit out here?" he said. "The whole camp will soon be asleep; but I can't let you go yet."

She sank down, forthwith, upon the grassy slope, in which the fire of a June sun still lingered; and clasping her hands about her knees, looked up at him invitingly. By way of response he stretched himself full length, a little below her, resting on his elbow in such a position as afforded him a clear view of her profile, that gleamed, like a cameo against a background of deodars.

"Smoke," she said softly.

"No. I think not."

His tone had a touch of constraint, and a lone silence fell.

The strange solitude about them was no stranger than the enchantment of being alone in it together; and there was that in their hearts that made speech difficult.

They sat looking northward toward the moonlit hollow where the station camp clustered close to the forest's edge. Behind the camp—a mass of unbroken shadow—it climbed up and upward to the mystery of a sky, powdered with the gold-dust of faint stars, on which its jagged outline was printed black as ink. Beyond that again, one majestic snow-peak,—like a stainless soul rising out of a tomb,—gleamed in the light of an increasingly brilliant moon. The crowd round the bonfire had crumbled into a hundred insignificant seeming units; and the fire itself, no longer aspiring to the stars, glowed like an angry eye in the dusky face of the glade.

Presently Quita spoke.

"There is so endlessly much to say, that I don't know where to begin. And after all, I am utterly content just to feel that you are there; that I have really got you back at last."

"You have had me, body and soul, these five years," he answered simply. "It is I who have gained you, by some miracle of your womanhood that I shall never fathom."

"If you set it down to your own manhood, you might be nearer the mark. You are very much too humble, Eldred; and I love you for it,—always did."

"Always?"

"I verily believe so."

"Good God! I never misjudged you, did I? If you . . . cared then, why ever did you leave me?"

"Because you gave me no time to take it in. But I am sure now that the germ was there. I think your . . . kisses must have waked it into life. That was why they upset me so. And when I came back, I meant to . . . Oh why should we rake it all up again? It hurts too much."

"But I must know everything now, Quita. You meant to tell me,—was that it?"

"Yes. Though I own it was rather late in the day. Then you sprang it upon me with that letter. I detest the man who wrote it, and I always shall. There was just enough of truth in it, and in your bitter reproaches, to make me feel the hopelessness of lame explanations. Besides, your anger frightened me, though I didn't show it; and I simply acted on a blind impulse to escape from the unknown things ahead; to get back to the love and work I could understand."

"My poor darling! What a blackguard I was to you!"

"Hush! You are not to say that."

"I will. It's true. But . . . didn't you care a great deal for the other chap?"

"I imagined I did. Girls can't always analyse new feelings of that sort. I can see now that it was chiefly mental sympathy between us, on my side at least. But I only discovered that when the real thing came—in a flash."

"When was that?" he asked on a note of eagerness.

"One May morning on the Kajiar road! I knew then that I must have cared always, without guessing it. But your coolness roused my pride; and I vowed that if you had wiped me out of your heart, I would die sooner than let you suspect my discovery. Yet all the while I longed for you to know it; and in the end, goaded by your blindness, and your astonishing want of conceit, I break my pride into a hundred little bits. Ai-je ÉtÉ assez femme?" she concluded with a whimsical smile.

One of her hands lay on the grass beside him. He covered it with his own.

"And was the amazing discovery responsible for the Garth episode?" His tone had a hint of anxiety.

"For the latter part of it, yes; though we have been friends all the winter. He is at least moderately intelligent; and an intelligent egoist is always interesting. Besides, companionship is the breath of life to me, you understand; and I seldom manage to make friends with women."

"The other kind of friendship is an edged tool."

"And therefore irresistible! It's like fencing with the buttons off the foils."

"You speak from much practical experience?"

"Yes. I have had my share of it. But please believe me, Eldred,"—she hesitated,—"I have been as loyal to you in word and deed, all these years, as if I had borne your name, and lived under your roof. In spite of my weakness for edged tools, I have never let any man tell me that he loved me since you told me so yourself, in the dark ages. And if a few have wanted to do so, I could hardly help that, could I?"

"No more than you could help breathing or sleeping," he answered with a slow strong pressure of her hand.

"I know I ought not to have let Major Garth see so much of me after I saw how it was with him, but—since it's the whole truth to-night—I confess your aloofness hurt me so, that I wanted to see if I could rouse you to a spark of feeling by hurting you back, and I chose the weapon readiest to my hand."

"You struck deep with it. Does the knowledge give you any satisfaction?"

"It fills my cup of shame to overflowing. Yet,—come to think of things, you did much the same without realising it."

"Which makes a vast difference, surely?"

"Not to me, mon ami. It is only God who judges by the intention; possibly because He never suffers from the action."

"Quita! That's irreverent!"

"Is it? I'm sorry if it sets your Scottish prickles on end! Are you . . . a very religious man, Eldred?"

"I believe in God," he answered simply.

A short silence followed the statement. Then Quita spoke.

"But you see, don't you, dear man, that I spoke truth. My pain was none the less sharp because you inflicted it unwittingly. It's one of the things people are apt to forget."

"Your pain? Before God I never dreamed that any act of mine could give you a minute's uneasiness; though Mrs Desmond . . ."

"Don't begin about Mrs Desmond, please!" She drew her hand away with a touch of impatience. "She is everything that is perfect, of course. But I hate her; and I believe I always shall."

Lenox turned on his elbow and looked up into her face.

"My dear . . . I can't let you speak so of my best friend. We owe her everything, you and I. You shall hear about it all one of these days. And apart from that, she is . . ."

"Yes, yes. I can see what she is, clearly enough. A superbly beautiful woman, outside and in, who possesses a good deal of influence over you. I can be just to her, you see, if I am . . . jealous."

"Jealous? Nonsense. The word is an insult to her, and to me."

She reddened under the reproof in his tone.

"Forgive me. I didn't mean it so. I am only afraid that after close intimacy with her you will find—your wife rather a poor thing by comparison. Just the 'eternal feminine' with all an artist's egoism, and more than the full complement of faults."

She spoke so simply, and with such transparent sincerity, that again he turned on her abruptly; his smouldering passion quickened to a flame.

"Quita . . . you dear woman . . . if I could only make you realise . . . !"

But long repression, and the knowledge that was poisoning his perfect hour, constrained him to reticence. He dared not let himself go.

"I think I do realise . . . now . . ." she whispered, stirred to the depths by the repressed intensity of his tone.

"Then don't belittle yourself any more. I forbid it. You understand?"

Again he heard the low laugh on which her soul seemed to ride. Then, leaning impulsively down to him, she put her bare arms round his shoulders from behind, and rested her cheek upon his hair.

The man held his breath, and remained very still, as if fearful lest word or movement should break the spell. After five years of unloved loneliness, this first spontaneous caress from his wife, with its delicate suggestion of intimacy, seemed to break down invisible barriers and set new life coursing in his veins.

"You forbid it?" she echoed, on a tremulous note of happiness. "And you have the right to. You, and no one else in all the world! You laughed at me in the old days—do you remember?—for clutching at my independence. Well, I have had my surfeit of it now; and I am desperately tired of standing alone . . . darling."

She paused before the unfamiliar word, unconsciously accentuating its effect, and Lenox, taking her two hands in one of his own, kissed them fervently. The moment he dreaded was upon him, and in the face of her impassioned tenderness he scarcely knew how to meet it.

"You should not stand alone one minute longer, if I could have my will," he said in a repressed voice.

She lifted her head and looked at him.

"And why can't you have your will? What are we going to do about it,
Eldred?"

"Nothing in a hurry," he answered slowly. "We paid too dearly for that last time."

"But, mon cher . . . we have waited five whole years."

"That is just the difficulty. Five years of overwork and bitterness of spirit are not to be wiped out in a single hour; even such an hour as this. The man you married had not gone through the fire, and been badly burned in the process."

He paused. The irony of their reversed positions stung him to the quick, and she sat watching his face. The pallor of moonlight intensified its ruggedness, its deep indentations of cheek and brow. She began to be aware that the dropped stitches of life cannot always be picked up again at will; that there is no tyrant more pitiless than the Past; and a vague dread took hold of her, sealing her lips.

"We have got to look facts in the face to-night," Lenox went on with the doggedness of his race. "I'm a poor hand at discussing myself. It's an unprofitable subject. But I can't let you rush headlong into a reunion that may prove disastrous . . . for you. To-night's revelation has astounded me. It isn't easy to get one's bearings all at once; but before we take any further irretrievable step I am bound, in conscience, to tell you how the land lies. When you—repudiated me, I accepted your decision as final. I never dreamed of your coming back; and I acted accordingly. I took to work as I might have taken to drink, if I had been made that way; with the natural result that I . . . smoked a great deal too much, and slept too little. I saw no earthly reason to husband my strength, or my life; and in consequence, I have gained something of a reputation for tackling dangerous and difficult jobs. There's plenty more work of the kind ahead, with the forward policy in full swing; and one can't go back on all that has been done. You see that, don't you?"

"Yes. But couldn't I ever go with you?"

He smiled. "I believe you have grit enough! But it would be unheard of. Besides . . . there is another trouble, and a very serious one, blocking the way."

"You will tell me what it is?"

He did not answer at once. To blacken himself deliberately in the eyes of the woman he loves is no light ordeal for a man; and Lenox shrank from it with the peculiar sensitiveness of a nature at once humble and proud; the more so since to-night had brought home to him the heart-breaking truth that in "the devil's wedlock of evil and pain" one can never suffer alone.

But a great love had been given him, and a force stronger than his will impelled him to speak truth, even at the cost of losing it.

"Yes . . . I will tell you what it is," he said slowly, looking straight before him. "You have the right to know."

And in a few blunt words, unsoftened by excuse or justification, he told her, not the fact only, but his dread of its far-reaching effect.

"And it seems plain as daylight to me," he added bitterly, "that a man so cursed has no right to multiply misery by taking a woman into his life. That was the real reason why I kept clear of you latterly, and tried to thank God that you did not care."

He could not trust himself to look round at her face, but he felt her lean close to him again. For the unobtrusive strength of the man stood revealed in his confession; and it is woman's second nature to admire strength.

"Eldred, . . . my husband," she breathed, her voice breaking on the word. "How cruelly you must have suffered! And it was all my fault."

There spoke the woman!—intent upon the individual; blind—wilfully or otherwise—to the larger issues involved.

"It was not your fault," he answered with smothered vehemence. "And in any case, don't you see, it's no question of blame, but of consequences. And we dare not shut our eyes to them. For this business of marriage is a complicated affair. What's more, I believe the wrench of immediate separation, with the comparative freedom it involves, would come less hard on you in the long-run, than actual marriage with a man of my stamp.—Oh, you would find me a sorry bargain all round, I assure you," he concluded with a short, hard laugh. "And you will do well to think twice before you burn your boats for me!"

She slid lower down the slope, and laid one hand on his knee.

"I don't choose to think twice; and I have burnt my boats as it is! Besides . . . you will be strong to conquer your trouble, now you know that all my happiness depends upon it." She paused for an appreciable moment. "We seem to have changed places since that long-ago morning, Eldred. It is I who want—to begin now—on any terms."

He put out his arm, and drew her very close to him.

"Feckless as ever!" he chided without severity. "You dismissed me on an impulse; and now you would take me back again with the same stupendous disregard for results. It is very evident you need some one to look after you, and teach you common-sense."

"I have told you already who it is that I need. Isn't that enough?"

The thrill in her low tone set all the man in him on fire. The influence of the hour was strong upon him.

"My God!" he muttered under his breath. "How can mere flesh and blood hold out against you?"

"Must you hold out against me—even after what I said?"

She nestled nearer, and stray tendrils of hair softly brushed his cheek. His lips whitened, but he set them close. Her touch, the perfume of her passion, had their exalting effect on him. Her weakness challenged his strength.

"Yes; I must," he answered quietly. "For your sake, my dear, and for my own self-respect. I am fighting this thing, you understand, with every weapon at my command. And until I see my way clear out on the other side, I will not—I dare not—take you back. Now come. It is high time you were asleep. We can't stay out here together all night."

"We have every right to . . . if we choose," she murmured, still rebellious.

"You forget, I am to teach you common-sense! There is to-morrow to be thought of, and your long ride back to Dalhousie."

A small shiver ran through her.

"I am afraid of to-morrow. I shall wake up and feel as if all this had been a dream. When shall I see you again . . . alone?"

"I will come up and call on you the day after!" he said, assuming a deliberate lightness in sheer self-defence. "Don't let me find Garth there, though; or I warn you I shall not be accountable for my behaviour!"

He rose on the words, and lifted her to her feet. They descended the slope in silence, walking a little apart, as if accentuating the fact that their reunion in this June night of enchantment and faint stars was an incomplete thing after all.

The moon was near her zenith; and, outside the formless dark of the forest, the great glade held her radiance as a goblet holds wine. Past the half-hidden temple of the holy lake they moved leisurely towards the cluster of tents that showed like a pallid excrescence at the forest's edge. To-night again, as on that earlier unforgettable day, they seemed the only living beings in a world of shadows and folded wings; and the decree of separation, coming at such a moment, put a severe strain on their self-control.

Fifty feet from Quita's tent they stood still.

She held out her hands. He pressed them closely between his own, that were strangely cold, and lifted them to his lips. Then she swayed forward unsteadily; and in an instant her face was hidden against his shoulder, her whole frame shaken with soundless sobs.

A woman in tears sets even a case-hardened man at a disadvantage; and Lenox, confronted with the phenomenon for the first time in his life, experienced a sense of helpless bewilderment, coupled with a vague conviction of his own brutality in having brought this happy-hearted wife of his to such a pass. He could not guess that after a week of ceaseless tension, played out with no little fortitude, this moment of unrestraint came as a pure relief to her overwrought nerves; a relief that verged upon ecstasy, since her husband's arm was round her, his hand mechanically stroking her hair.

"Hold up, hold up," he urged her gently. "This sort of thing will never do."

But control, once lost, is ill to regain. His words produced no visible affect, for in her momentary abandonment, she could not see his face; or guess at the struggle that was enacting behind its curtain of self-mastery. And now, to discomfiture was added an overpowering temptation to trample on all scruples of conscience; to take that which was his, without further let or hindrance; and put an end to their distracting situation once for all.

"Quita, . . . my darling wife . . . !" he broke out desperately. "For Heaven's sake pull yourself together. You are torturing me past endurance. Do you suppose it is an easy thing . . . to let you go?"

She raised her head at that, compressing her lips to still their tremor.

"Forgive me, . . . dearest. It was stupid of me to make a fuss. I will go now; and I promise not to behave like this again."

She deliberately drew his head down to her own; and they kissed, once. Then she left him, something hurriedly; and he stood transfixed looking after her, till the falling flap of the tent hid her from view.

There could be no thought of sleep for Eldred Lenox that night.

Till the moon slipped behind the pines, and the sentinel snow-peak in the North caught, and flung back, the first glimmer of dawn, he paced the empty glade from end to end. His mouth and throat were parched. His every nerve clamoured for the accustomed narcotic. But pipe and tobacco-pouch reposed in his breast-pocket—untouched.