amining a distant star.

"In a few days, if Mackay agrees. Poor Desmond, he hates letting his
wife go. But for her sake he wants to get her away from here as soon
as possible."

"I see. And you want to get me away from here as soon as possible.
It's a very convenient arrangement for you both."

Her implication stabbed him. He stood still, and faced her; his eyes
full of pain. But he made no attempt to touch her: which was a mistake.

She stood still also,--head uplifted, hands clasped behind
her,--without discontinuing her scrutiny of the heavens.

"By the Lord, you are hitting back harder than I deserve," he
reproached her desperately. "At least you might believe of me all that
I said of Desmond, . . that it is for your sake, and that I shall hate
letting you go. The suggestion was entirely his own. He asked me to
tell you, from him, that you would be doing them both a very real
kindness by going with Mrs Desmond; and I thought . . you would be glad
of a chance to help either of them; especially since you must know,
after all I said at Kajiar, that it is impossible . . yet for us to
start fair and square."

It was a long speech for Eldred, and it brought her down from the stars.

"Naturally I am delighted to do anything on earth for the Desmonds,"
she said sweetly, ignoring his final remark. "You speak as if I might
refuse to go. But I haven't fallen quite so low as that."

"Quita, have you _no_ mercy on a man?" he flashed out between anger and
pain. "There has never been any question of 'falling' on your side,
and you know it. But surely you understand that, in spite of all that
has happened between, what I dared not to do a month ago, I dare not do
now."

"Do you mean . . is . . the trouble not any less?"

"No."

"But I thought you were going . . to fight it?"

"So I am; so I shall, till I break it, or it breaks me. But look back
over the past few weeks, and ask yourself if I have had much of a
chance so far."

She unclasped her hands and looked up at him, speech hovering in her
eyes. But she dropped them again, and stood so, with bowed head,
shifting her rings nervously up and down her slim third finger.

"Dear lass, what's troubling you?" he asked. "We've got to understand
one another to-night; so don't be afraid to speak out. Better make a
clean wound and have done with it, than think hard things of me that
may be unjust. Tell me the thought I saw in your eyes."

"I was thinking