tropics,
even though bred within the empire of the midnight sun, even when
accident has given their imagination no such impulse as Anne Percy's
had received from the works of Byam Warner. Mind and body respond the
moment they enter that mysterious belt which divides the moderate
zones, upon whose threshold the spirit of worldliness sinks inert, and
within whose charmed circle the principle of life is king. Those of
the North with the call of the tropics in their blood have never a
moment of strangeness; they are content, at home.

The pauses at the still more southern islands on the way up from
Barbadoes had been brief, but Anne had had glimpses of great fields
of cane, set with the stately homes of planters, the grace of
palm-fringed shores and silver sands; the awful majesty of volcanic
islands, torn and racked by earthquake, eaten by fire, sometimes
rising so abruptly from the sea as to imply a second half split to
its base and hurled to the depths. But although there had been much to
delight and awe, the wine in her cup had not risen to the brim until
she came in sight of Nevis, whose perfection of form and colour, added
to the interest her gifted and unhappy son had inspired, made her seem
to eager romantic eyes the incarnation of all the loveliness of all
the tropics. To-night Anne could forget even Byam Warner, who indeed
had never seemed so far away, and she only went within when the cloud
rolled down Nevis and enveloped her, as if in rebuke of those that
would gaze upon her beauty too long.

CHAPTER IV

Anne started from the sound unhaunted sleep of youth conscious that
some one had entered her room and stood by her bed. It proved to be a
grinning barefoot coloured maid with coffee, rolls, and a plate of
luscious fruit. Anne's untuned ear could make little of the girl's
voluble replies to her questions, for the West Indian negroes used one
gender only, and made a limited vocabulary cover all demands. But she
gathered that it was about half-past-five o'clock, and that the loud
bell ringing in the distance informed the world of Nevis that it was
market day in Charlestown.

She had been shown the baths the day before and ran down-stairs to the
great stone tanks, enjoyed her swim in the sea water quite alone, and
returned to her room happy and normal, not a dream lingering in her
brain. As she dressed herself she longed for one of those old frocks
in which she had taken comfort at Warkworth, but even h