they love?" I asked finally.

John Silence smiled his inscrutable smile. "Profoundly," he answered,
"and as simply as only primitive souls can love. If only they both come
to realise it in their normal waking states his Double will cease these
nocturnal excursions. He will be cured, and at rest."

The words had hardly left his lips when there was a sound of rustling
branches on our left, and the very next instant the dense brushwood
parted where it was darkest and out rushed the swift form of an animal
at full gallop. The noise of feet was scarcely audible, but in that
utter stillness I heard the heavy panting breath and caught the swish of
the low bushes against its sides. It went straight towards Joan--and as
it went the girl lifted her head and turned to meet it. And the same
instant a canoe that had been creeping silently and unobserved round the
inner shore of the lagoon, emerged from the shadows and defined itself
upon the water with a figure at the middle thwart. It was Maloney.

It was only afterwards I realised that we were invisible to him where we
stood against the dark background of trees; the figures of Joan and the
animal he saw plainly, but not Dr. Silence and myself standing just
beyond them. He stood up in the canoe and pointed with his right arm. I
saw something gleam in his hand.

"Stand aside, Joan girl, or you'll get hit," he shouted, his voice
ringing horribly through the deep stillness, and the same instant a
pistol-shot cracked out with a burst of flame and smoke, and the figure
of the animal, with one tremendous leap into the air, fell back in the
shadows and disappeared like a shape of night and fog. Instantly, then,
Joan opened her eyes, looked in a dazed fashion about her, and pressing
both hands against her heart, fell with a sharp cry into my arms that
were just in time to catch her.

And an answering cry sounded across the lagoon--thin, wailing, piteous.
It came from Sangree's tent.

"Fool!" cried Dr. Silence, "you've wounded him!" and before we could
move or realise quite what it meant, he was in the canoe and half-way
across the lagoon.

Some kind of similar abuse came in a torrent from my lips, too--though I
cannot remember the actual words--as I cursed the man for his
disobedience and tried to make the girl comfortable on the ground. But
the clergyman was more practical. He was spreading his coat over her and
dashing water on her face.

"It's not Joan I've killed at any rate,