"No," he said, "nothing will. But would you not despise a man who could
not screw up his courage to face the possibility?"

He wondered what she was thinking about, for she did not seem to hear
him.

A clock in the drawing-room behind them struck the half-hour, and the
sound seemed to recall her to the present.

"Are you going now?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered, vaguely puzzled. "Yes, I must go now."

She rose, and for a moment he held her hand. He was distinctly conscious
of something left unsaid--of many things. He even paused on the edge of
the verandah, trying to think what it was that he had to say. Then he
pushed aside the hanging flowers and passed out.

"Good-bye!" he said over his shoulder.

Her lips moved, but he heard no sound. She turned with a white, drawn
face and sat down again. The paper was still in her hand. She consulted
it again, reading in a whisper:

"Millicent Chyne--Millicent!"

She turned the paper over and studied the back of it--almost as if she
was trying to find what there was behind that name.

Through the trees there rose and fell the music of the distant surf.
Somewhere near at hand a water-wheel, slowly irrigating the rice-fields,
creaked and groaned after the manner of water-wheels all over Africa.
In all there was that subtle sense of unreality--that utter lack of
permanency which touches the heart of the white exile in tropic lands,
and lets life slip away without allowing the reality of it to be felt.

The girl sat there with the name before her--written on the little slip
of paper--the only memento he had left her.

CHAPTER XIX. IVORY

'Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,
Another thing to fall.

One of the peculiarities of Africa yet to be explained is the almost
supernatural rapidity with which rumour travels. Across the whole
breadth of this darkest continent a mere bit of gossip has made its way
in a month. A man may divulge a secret, say, at St. Paul de Loanda, take
ship to Zanzibar, and there his own secret will be told to him.

Rumour met Maurice Gordon almost at the outset of his journey northward.

"Small-pox is raging on the Ogowe River," they told him. "The English
expedition is stricken down with it. The three leaders are dead."

Maurice Gordon had not lived four years on the West African coast
in vain. He took this for what it was worth. But if he had acquired
scepticism, he had lost his nerve. He put about and sailed back to