All of Payne's
hard-won man-strength seemed to leave him: he felt as weak as a child;
and he began to stammer brokenly.

"Anything I can do--if I can help--what you spoke of--Back There in the
jungle----?"

"No, no. Nobody can help me with that. It's got to be just myself. I
know that now."

She was the more self-controlled. Payne could not speak. All that he
wished to say--his strength, his life, at her call in her hour of
need--he expressed in a gesture.

"Thank you."

She touched his outstretched hand. Instinctively their fingers locked
together, instinctively she swayed toward him.

"Thank you."

He had released her hand. They looked at one another a long time. She
smiled a little.

"I must go back."

She touched his sleeve lightly, mounted and looked down at him.

"Can't I help in any way?" he asked.

"No one can help me," she whispered. "No one but my own weak self."

And the look upon her countenance which had appalled him as she passed
through the gate was coming back as she rode away.

XXIII

A soft, misty pall of midsummer heat hung over and pervaded the
vine-covered forest of wild-apple trees surrounding Garman's house when
Payne set out on Sunday afternoon to keep his appointment. As he
entered the footpath leading from the prairie toward the house, he was
forced to stoop to avoid the curtain of flowering moonvine which hung
overhead, and once in the path he felt again the sickening drowsiness
of the shut-in air. A mingling of many sweet odors hung about him like
a heavy, poisonous drug; and he felt that it was pleasant poison, and
walked swiftly on.

In a shaded pergola running out from the house to the jungle he saw
Annette, and stopped.

An old man with a white Vandyke beard and pompously out-thrown chest
was coming down the path from the house. He strutted as he walked, and
stood for a moment framed between two palm trees where the path entered
the pergola.

"Little Annette!" he murmured, beaming patronizingly upon the girl.
"Happy again. I knew you would be. But I haven't heard you laugh for
a long time."

"No," said the girl, looking at him intently, "I haven't laughed since
we came here."

"But you are happy now. Yes, yes, quite happy, quite happy. Up early
this morning and all round the place like a little lark."

"Because I couldn't sleep. And because--early in the morning--others
are not up--and I can be alone."

"No one can--no one can be alon