nd that lay along his arm passionately. "Come along," he
said.

"Oh, this _is_ good, Peter," said Julie a few minutes later. She had
thrown off her wrap, and was standing by the fire while he arranged the
cigarettes, the biscuits, and a couple of drinks on the little table with
its shaded light. "Did you lock the door? Are we quite alone, we two, at
last, with all the world shut out?"

He came swiftly over to her, and took her in his arms for answer. He
pressed kisses on her hair, her lips, her neck, and she responded to
them.

"Oh, love, love," he said, "let's sit down and forget that there is
anything but you and I."

She broke from him with a little laugh of excitement. "We will, Peter,"
she said; "but I'm going to take off this dress and one or two other
things, and let my hair down. Then I'll come back."

"Take them off here," he said; "you needn't go away."

She looked at him and laughed again. "Help me, then," she said, and
turned her back for him to loosen her dress.

Clumsily he obeyed. He helped her off with the shimmering beautiful
thing, and put it carefully over a chair. With deft fingers she loosened
her hair, and he ran his fingers through it, and buried his face in the
thick growth of it. She untied a ribbon at her waist, and threw from
her one or two of her mysterious woman's things. Then, with a sigh of
utter abandonment, she threw herself into his arms.

They sat long over the fire. Outside the dull roar of the sleepless city
came faintly up to them, and now and again a coal fell in the grate. At
long last Peter pushed her back a little from him. "Little girl," he
said, "I must ask one thing. Will you forgive me? That night at
Abbeville, after we left Langton, what was it you wouldn't tell me?
What was it you thought he would have known about you, but not I? Julie,
I thought, to-night--was it anything to do with East Africa--those
tropical nights under the moon? Oh, tell me, Julie!"

The girl raised her eyes to his. That look of pain and knowledge that he
had seen from the beginning was in them again. Her hand clasped the
lappet of his tunic convulsively, and she seemed to him indeed but a
little girl.

"Peter! could you not have asked? But no, you couldn't, not you.... But
you guess now, don't you? Oh, Peter, I was so young, and I thought--oh,
I thought: the big thing had come, and since then life's been all one
big mockery. I've laughed at it, Peter: it was the only way. And then
you ca