he logs on the hearth. In a moment the flames were leaping and the
man who had straightened up stood for a brief space watching them spread
and broaden.

It was while he was so engaged that Conscience raised her hand and held
out her glass, still not quite emptied, for Stuart to set down. She did
so silently and the man rose from his chair and took it from her, but in
the simple operation their fingers met and a sudden surging of emotions
came to each in the moment of contact.

Without a word, save as his lips formed mutely the two syllables--"To
you"--Stuart lifted the glass toward her and then drained it.

Then as he replaced it together with his own on the table Eben Tollman
turned, and noted, with satisfaction, the emptiness of the miniature
goblets.

The light of animation had died slowly from the dark eyes of the woman,
until to the watching husband they seemed inky pools of languor. The
leaping flames held her attention and her lips were parted in an
inscrutable half-smile. Already her thoughts were becoming pleasantly
languid, dwelling on such inconsequential things as how blue the water
had been--and that after all to-morrow does not come--until to-morrow.

Shadows leaped and danced fantastically against the color of the
crackling logs and in her hair shimmered a glow that ranged between the
glint of darkened mahogany and jet. It was of this that Stuart thought,
as, for a half hour, they listened to Tollman's talk, content with brief
replies or none at all. Some magic had lulled him, too, into a quietened
mood from which had been smoothed the saw-edged raggedness of despair.
With a vague wonderment he recognized this metamorphosis. No such
soothing potency lay in any wine ever pressed from the grapes of
Funchal; but it was inexplicably pleasant, and surrender grew beyond any
power of its questioning or combatting. Gradually, agreeably the two of
them were sinking below the surface of consciousness. Soon they would be
submerged.

Then in a moment of partial realization, Conscience said: "I think I had
better go upstairs. I was almost napping in my chair." But she made no
actual effort to move and her husband raised a smiling demurrer to the
suggestion.

"It would be a pity to go just now. The fire has only begun to be
cheerful and as for myself I am still chilly."

It was unaccountably pleasant there, with this strange, almost magical
blurring of realities into a velvety ease ... with visions of blue wa