n unutterable melancholy. The figure, lying on its back and
extended along the grass, appeared very tall, and lay so still that it
might have been the form of a dead man.

Roger, without seeing the sleeping face, guessed by the abrupt stop and
the low-spoken words of the two in front that Maxime Dalahaide was found.
He drew back slightly, with a meaning glance at George, who stepped
forward to join the others.

Suddenly the black line of lashes trembled; a pair of dark, tragic eyes,
more like those of Madeleine Dalahaide than the laughing ones of the
portrait, opened and looked straight into Virginia's. For a few seconds
their gaze remained fixed, as if the white vision had been a broken
dream; then a deep flush spread over the thin face of the young man, and
he rose to his feet.

"This lady and her brother have come a long way to see New Caledonia,"
said the Commandant kindly. "They wish to talk to you."

Maxime Dalahaide bowed. Virginia saw that he pressed his lips together,
and that the muscles of his face quivered. She guessed how he must suffer
at having to gratify--as he supposed--the morbid curiosity of a girl, and
it hurt her to think that she must be the one to give him this added
pain.

She turned to the Commandant, and, with a voice not quite steady, asked
if she and her brother might speak to the man alone. She felt that she
should be less embarrassed in her questions, she said, if no one
listened. With a smile the old Frenchman consented, bowing like a
courtier, and joined Roger Broom, who stood at a little distance out of
sight of the convict.

"I thought there was no use embarrassing the poor fellow with any more
strangers," Roger explained to the Commandant, as they moved further away
down the path by which they had come. "After all, my place in this
expedition is only to take a few photographs, wherever they are
permitted"; and he touched the camera, slung over his shoulder, of which
he had already made ostentatious use on several occasions. "May I have a
snapshot of the hospital, with all those chaps on the verandahs? Thanks;
we must go a little to the right, then. By Jove! what a lot of gray
figures there are about. How do you make sure they can't escape, if they
choose, out here where they don't seem to be guarded?"

"It is only 'seem,'" retorted the Commandant, laughing. "All these men
are invalids; we make short work of malingerers. Very few could run a
dozen yards without falling down, and