long: just a little farther."

"Did you ever swim in champagne with your mouth open?"

"No."

"What a fool!"

Then he stopped, straightened up and sang, in a die-away, broken voice,
with chattering teeth:

"See the Britons, Bloody Britons,
Millions of 'em doncherknow,
All a swarming up the kopje--
Just to turn about an hopje!
O, where in hell to go!
Bloody Britons!"

Grasping her roughly by the shoulder, he exclaimed: "Why don't you join
in the chorus, you blithering idiot?"

This song, in fragments and with variations, he sang--or rather tried to
sing--repeatedly. At the edge of the woods he seemed to shrink from the
fury of the storm which drove, in cutting blasts, against their faces.
And on the threshold of the cottage he again held back. In the doorway,
leaning against the jamb, he said, solemnly:

"Look here, young feller, just mark my words, women are devils. The less
you have to do with them the better for you. D--n the whole tribe!
That's what I say!"

But she dragged him in and supported him to a chair before the fire. He
sat shivering with cold, his chin upon his breast, apparently exhausted
by the walk. The water dripping from his saturated garments formed
puddles on the floor.

Elinor, for a moment, stood regarding him in heart-stricken silence.
Once more she felt of his clothes, then, after an inward struggle, she
made a resolve. As she did it the color came into her cheeks.

[Illustration]

IX

A SINNER'S RECOMPENSE

After a lapse of time--an unremembered period of whose length he had no
conception--Pats awoke.

Was it a little temple of carved wood in which he lay? At each corner
stood a column; above him a little dome of silk, ancient and much faded.
Gradually--and slowly--he realized that he was reposing on a bed of vast
dimensions and in a room whose furnishings belonged to a previous
century. A mellow, golden light pervaded the apartment. This light,
which gave to all things in the room an air of unreality--as in an
ancient painting luminous with age--came from the sunshine entering
through a piece of antiquated silk, placed by considerate hands against
the window.

Pats's wandering eyes encountered a lady in a chair. She sat facing him,
a few feet away, her head resting easily against the carved woodwork
behind, a hand upon each arm of the seat. She was asleep. In this golden
mist she seemed to the half-dreaming man a vision from another
world--s