h as many as they wanted."

Verna was beginning to feel uncomfortable, and some mysterious telepathy
made Denham aware of the fact.

"Of course," he answered cheerily. "Don't we build war-ships on the
Clyde and Tyne and at Belfast for foreign Powers to use against
ourselves if they want to? It seems to me there's precious little
difference, if any at all."

"Bless your soul, no. Well, I raft up some pretty good loads for the
Usutu in the mid-eighties, when they were at each other's throats here.
The Usutu paid the best, you see. The other side had got their own
white men--John Dunn and others. We weren't over-ridden with
officialdom in those days. Those were times, but they've all gone.
Verna, if you're still on to that picnic, suppose you give us
breakfast."

"That picnic" was a ride which she and Denham had planned down into the
forest country in search of specimens. They had taken several of the
kind already.

Yes, several. And Denham, thrown into the daily society of this girl,
had come to the conclusion that such society was necessary to him,
daily, and thenceforward. His life since he had been here had been an
idyll, he told himself, a sheer idyll. Why should it not be a permanent
one? Strangely enough, with all his advantages and experiences Denham
was singularly modest. Why should he expect Verna to leave her father
at the call of a mere stranger? Why should he expect her father to be
ready to part with her? They were so happy together, so wrapt up in
each other; and he, after all, what was he but a mere stranger? And
then there was something darker at the back of that, but it he put away
from his thoughts. Still, it would obtrude.

Sometimes the thought of his wealth and position would come to his aid.
But immediately it would strike him that such counted for nothing here.
If ever there was an independently-minded man on earth it was his host,
and as for Verna, why, she was clean outside all his experience of the
other sex. Then again would come in that strange and subtle sympathy,
which would well up at times during their close and daily companionship.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The atmosphere of the Lumisana forest was not so stuffy and
fever-breathing now. A touch of approaching winter was upon it, and
from the blue, unclouded sky the sun no longer shot down rays of torrid
heat. So as the pair threaded the narrow path, closely shut i