t his other side. Belinda was leaning across
him and pressing down his face with her hand. She was laughing. He could
see the tip of her tongue between her white teeth as in mischief. She
looked very beautiful, but wicked. Her white breast showed through
little petals of red flowers. He struggled to lift his head.

"Where is the black knife of Lur?" he cried; and as he cried it, again
he broke into a sweat of fear. Belinda laughed more, and said:

"It is there. Look!"

She took away her hand from his face, and he rose on his elbow, and
turned to see Sophy lying, white and still, with the handle of the knife
protruding from her breast. Belinda was saying:

"Didn't I do it well? Not a drop of blood!"

He gave a choked scream, and woke sweating and trembling like a
panic-stricken horse.

XLII

The next day Loring felt unnerved in an absurd manner by that dream. It
kept coming between him and reality. Even after he was wide awake, the
remembered voice of the huge negro saying: "_This is the black knife of
Lur_," gave him a disagreeable shiver. The mental atmosphere of the
house did not tend to soothe him. At breakfast Charlotte was icily
polite, the Judge restrained and taciturn. Sophy did not come down till
after ten. She suggested a ride. This ride also was very trying for them
both. He began with the old arguments. She answered with a sad
listlessness, but with an under note of determination which made him
feel angry and discouraged.

The day was so triumphantly clear after the great wind of yesterday
that it seemed to emphasize their inner gloom.

After luncheon they went for a walk together, and again they had "great
argument about it, and about." They were frightfully unhappy, and one as
determined as the other. Yet Belinda would keep stealing upon Loring's
thought--the Belinda of that ridiculous, odious dream, with her white
breasts peeping through red petals and the tip of her pretty feline
tongue between her teeth. He could hear her saying: "_Didn't I do it
well? Not a drop of blood!_" Damn dreams, anyway!... As if a man hadn't
enough to contend with by day!...

About tea-time the camping-party returned in great spirits. Bobby came
whooping in to his mother's study waving a big branch of scarlet
berries. He stopped short at sight of Loring. A sort of stiffening went
through him. Loring, too, stiffened. Then Bobby came forward. They shook
hands coldly, more like two men than a man and a little bo