tirred himself into an admirable and hospitable vivacity.

His concert of last night had borne fruit, he thought.

If his knowledge of actual occurrences was sketchy his imagination had
filled all the blank spaces with colorful substitutes for fact.

"Stuart," he demanded suddenly, "what's happened to you? You've hurt
your right hand and you're trying to conceal it."

"It's nothing much," explained Farquaharson lamely. "I went for a walk
last night and when the fog came up I strayed over an embankment--and
had a rather nasty fall."

"My dear boy!" exclaimed Eben Tollman in a tone of instant solicitude.
"We must call the doctor at once. But you must have been out all night.
The fog didn't gather until two o'clock this morning."

Farquaharson only nodded with an uncommunicative smile, and Conscience
spoke in quiet authority.

"If it's a sprain, I can do as much for it as a doctor could. Wait for
me on the terrace, Stuart, I'll be out in a few minutes with hot water
and bandages."

A half hour later, grumbling remonstrances which were silently
overruled, the Virginian found himself in efficient hands.

The fog had not lasted long and this morning the hills sparkled with a
renewed freshness. A row of hollyhocks along the stone wall nodded
brightly, and the sun's clarity was a wash of transparent gold.

Stuart Farquaharson studied the profile of the woman who was busying
herself with bandages and liniments.

The exquisite curve of her cheek and throat; the play of an escaped curl
over her pale temple and the sweet wistfulness of her lips: none of
these things escaped him.

"It's not necessary, after all, that you should go away, Stuart," she
announced with a calm abruptness to Farquaharson's complete
mystification. "Last night I was in the grip of something like hysteria,
I think. Perhaps I'm still young enough to be influenced by such things
as music and moonlight."

"And this morning?"

"This morning," she spoke in a matter-of-fact voice as she measured and
cut a strip of bandage, "I am heartily ashamed of my moment of panic.
This morning I'm not afraid of you. Whether you go or stay, I sha'n't
give way again."

"Conscience," protested the man with an earnestness that drew his brow
into furrows of concentration, "last night I said many things that were
pure excitement. After years of struggling to put you out of my life and
years of failure to do it, after believing absolutely that it had become
a one-si