oonlit wood. Niobe
on the verge of a passion of tears!

"You look like a sad little brown thrush," he said gently.

His voice, his eyes chilled her with foreboding. They stood in utter
silence.

Joan touched the throbbing veins in her throat and moistened her lips.

"You have heard from Mr. Whitaker--"

"Yes, Garry brought the letter up."

"When--"

"I'm sailing in a week. I go from here--to-morrow."

"Brian!"

The terror in her eyes startled him and the tension snapped. An
instant later she was crying wildly in his arms. Brian crushed his
lips against her cheek, conscious only of an agonizing stab of joy,
then Joan pulled away, her eyes dark with grief and shame.

"Oh, Brian, Brian," she whispered passionately, "I--want--to die."

"I've wanted to die for weeks," said Brian. "Almost I think I did."

Joan caught her breath with a shuddering gasp.

"Don't!" said Brian. "I--can't bear to hear you cry. I've always
known that I was a pretty poor sort but this--"

His honest eyes begged for understanding,

Joan's face, wet with tears, condoned.

"I--I am worse," she said unsteadily.

He caught her hands rebelliously.

"But you love me," he said wistfully. "That, at least--"

Joan slipped into his arms again with a sob.

"I love you better than my life," she said, "and I may--never--say it
again."

[Illustration: "I love you better than my life," Joan said, "and I
may--never--say it again."]

Brian pressed his cheek against her hair.

"No," he said. "No. I would not have you say it again, Joan, dear as
it is to hear it."

An eternity of minutes seemed to tick away in the silence.

"Brian, you must believe I meant to be true to Kenny--"

"Don't!" he choked, paling at the sound of Kenny's name. "Oh, Kenny,
Kenny!"

Joan buried her face in his arm. Both were thinking with hot
remorseful hearts of that stormy penitent with the laughing, tender
Irish eyes. Both loved him well. And both were pledging themselves to
keep his happiness intact.

Joan's tormented memory was busy with pictures: Kenny disastrously
sculling the punt to help her, Kenny in the death-chamber shuddering
and patient and passionately resolved to stay by her to the end, Kenny
with the lantern held high above her head, Kenny digging dots and
helping Don to study and Kenny tearing bricks from the ancient
fireplace.

She slipped out of his arms in a panic, her face, Brian thought, as
white as the old-fashioned li