irch twig to give him courage. It must have
been because of her throat, white and soft, which he saw pulsing like a
beating heart before she spoke to him.

"I have made a terrible mistake, m'sieu David," she said, her voice
barely rising above a whisper. "I'm sorry I hurt you. I thought it was
some one else behind the rock. But I can not tell you more than
that--ever. And I know it is impossible for us to be friends." She
paused, one of her hands creeping to her bare throat, as if to cover
the throbbing he had seen there.

"Why is it impossible?" he demanded, leaning away from his pillows so
that he might bring himself nearer to her.

"Because--you are of the police, m'sieu."

"The police, yes," he said, his heart thrumming inside his breast. "I
am Sergeant Carrigan. I am out after Roger Audemard, a murderer. But my
commission has nothing to do with the daughter of St. Pierre Boulain.
Please--let's be friends--"

He held out his hand; and in that moment David Carrigan placed another
thing higher than duty--and in his eyes was the confession of it, like
the glow of a subdued fire. The girl's fingers drew more closely at her
throat, and she made no movement to accept his hand.

"Friends," he repeated. "Friends--in spite of the police."

Slowly the girl's eyes had widened, as if she saw that new-born thing
riding over all other things in his swiftly beating heart. And afraid
of it, she drew a step away from him.

"I am not St. Pierre Boulain's daughter," she said, forcing the words
out one by one. "I am--his wife."

VII

Afterward Carrigan wondered to what depths he had fallen in the first
moments of his disillusionment. Something like shock, perhaps even more
than that, must have betrayed itself in his face. He did not speak.
Slowly his outstretched arm dropped to the white counterpane. Later he
called himself a fool for allowing it to happen, for it was as if he
had measured his proffered friendship by what its future might hold for
him. In a low, quiet voice Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain was saying again
that she was St. Pierre's wife. She was not excited, yet he understood
now why it was he had thought her eyes were very dark. They had changed
swiftly. The violet freckles in them were like little flecks of gold.
They were almost liquid in their glow, neither brown nor black now, and
with that threat of gathering lightning in them. For the first time he
saw the slightest flush of color in her cheeks. It