arry me out of this lonely place?"

Heyst bent low over her, cursing his fastidious soul, which even at that
moment kept the true cry of love from his lips in its infernal mistrust
of all life. He dared not touch her and she had no longer the strength
to throw her arms about his neck.

"Who else could have done this for you?" she whispered gloriously.

"No one in the world," he answered her in a murmur of unconcealed
despair.

She tried to raise herself, but all she could do was to lift her head
a little from the pillow. With a terrible and gentle movement, Heyst
hastened to slip his arm under her neck. She felt relieved at once of
an intolerable weight, and was content to surrender to him the infinite
weariness of her tremendous achievement. Exulting, she saw herself
extended on the bed, in a black dress, and profoundly at peace, while,
stooping over her with a kindly, playful smile, he was ready to lift
her up in his firm arms and take her into the sanctuary of his innermost
heart--for ever! The flush of rapture flooding her whole being broke out
in a smile of innocent, girlish happiness; and with that divine radiance
on her lips she breathed her last--triumphant, seeking for his glance in
the shades of death.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"Yes, Excellency," said Davidson in his placid voice; "there are more dead in this affair--more white people, I mean--than have been killed in many of the battles in the last Achin war."

Davidson was talking with an Excellency, because what was alluded to in
conversation as "the mystery of Samburan" had caused such a sensation in
the Archipelago that even those in the highest spheres were anxious to
hear something at first hand. Davidson had been summoned to an audience.
It was a high official on his tour.

"You knew the late Baron Heyst well?"

"The truth is that nobody out here can boast of having known him well,"
said Davidson. "He was a queer chap. I doubt if he himself knew how
queer he was. But everybody was aware that I was keeping my eye on him
in a friendly way. And that's how I got the warning which made me turn
round in my tracks. In the middle of my trip and steam back to Samburan,
where, I am grieved to say, I arrived too late."

Without enlarging very much, Davidson explained to the attentive
Excellency how a woman, the wife of a certain hotel-keeper named
Schomberg, had overheard two card-sharping rascals making inquiries from
her husband as to the exact posi