as zu Pfeiffer held up the letter in the shaft of
moonlight. There was a suppressed grunt as of pain. Zu Pfeiffer rose
stiffly and walked to the door. His tall figure was silhouetted in profile
against the green sky and as Birnier watched he saw a gleam as of crystal
upon an eyelash. Birnier, ashamed of his sole vengeance, turned away.

But as if revenge were recoiling upon him came in the wake of that
satisfied primitive instinct a surge of longing for Lucille. Lucille!
Lucille! God! how he desired to see those eyes again! Feel those lips and
hear the gurgle of her laughter! Sense the perfume of her hair as she
murmured: "_Mon petit loup!_" Birnier sat holding the letter. He fought
with an impulse to abandon everything to go to her--if he could get out!
How stale and monotonous the adventure and the scientific interest
suddenly seemed! After all, what had he accomplished? What could he
accomplish? Even yet he had learned but little of the secrets of the
witch-doctor's craft. Perhaps there was little or nothing to learn? And zu
Pfeiffer? He stared across at the portrait of Lucille. And as he gazed a
wave of pity rose within him for this boy made mad by the witchery of
those eyes and the music of that voice. A sentence in Lucille's letter
appeared to stand out from the context: "_Mon Dieu, they are as thick as
the blackberries!_"

And yet--and yet---- Why the devil had she taken it into her head to come out
to Uganda above all places? he asked himself. She was so damnably near to
him. He smiled satirically as he recollected her phrase about those fools
who made of love a nuisance, and yet now what was she doing? After all the
suspicion in his mind that love is everything to a woman seemed proven
true.

But how adorable she was! He fingered the letter as if it were part of
her. Well, she was young; success and adulation from one capital to
another had interested and amused her for a few years, but when Milady had
suddenly discovered that the Career bored her she had thrown up everything
and logically--to her mind--expected her mate to do likewise! With what
insouciance had she treated the affair of zu Pfeiffer and the youngster
whom he had struck. When Birnier had met her she had had a story of a
young fool count in Paris who had shot himself, merely because she would
not listen to his suit; and she had protested with one of those wonderful
shrugs and a moue, saying that she could not marry all the men in the
world! Th