edge of his presence. Her glance went to him, and joy was
mingled with surprise in the face she turned towards the Mother-Superior.

"Really, Mother?"

The Mother-Superior, though her own still face had flushed with quick,
irrepressible resentment at Saxham's tone, said cheerfully:

"It is true, my child. Dr. Saxham thinks it will be best for you. Dr.
Saxham, this is my ward, Miss Mildare."

Saxham made his little brusque bow. Lynette, bending her lovely head, gave
a grateful glance at the khaki-clad figure with the great hulking
shoulders, standing under the patch of hot blue sky that the top of the
ladder vanished in, and a strange shock and thrill went through the man's
whole frame. His odd, gentian-coloured eyes under the heavy thunder-cloud
of black eyebrows lightened so suddenly in reply that the girl felt
repelled and half frightened. She was conscious of a curious oppression.
As for Saxham, a delicate, stinging fire ran newly in his veins. Something
stirred in the secret depths of him, and came to life with an awakening
thrill exquisitely poignant and sweet. For this slight, unsophisticated,
Convent-bred creature, slender as a lily, reared in innocence among the
blameless, was rich as her frail, lovely mother had been before her in the
mysterious allure of sex. Beautiful Lady Bridget-Mary at the zenith of her
stately beauty had never possessed one-tenth of the seductive charm that
emanated from this young girl. Thoughts of the stored-up golden honey seen
gleaming through the translucent waxen cells of the virgin comb made the
senses reel as you looked at her, if you were man born of woman, with your
passions alive and keen-edged in you, and your blood had not lost the lilt
of the song that it has sung in healthy veins of sons of Adam since the
Woman was made for and given to the Man. For Artemis may invite, if
unconsciously, the hot pursuit of the hunter; the shy, close-folded nymph
among the sedges may awaken the primal desire of Pan among the reeds....
Saxham, even in the years of his degradation, had scarcely sunk to the
level of the crook-shinned, hairy-thighed, hoofed satyr. But he had built
his nest with the birds of night, and slaked his thirst at impure sources,
and only now did he realise how his mad dream of vengeance upon the Power
that had cast him down and wrecked his future was to recoil upon himself.
"I have done with Love," he had said, "and with Hope, and with Life as it
is known of the honour