e calmly,
"and I'm already beginning to forget." And gently she laid her hand on
the back of my own which rested between us.

My blood bounded with an unreasoning pleasure, yet her movement had been
neither temperamental nor sentimental; it was instinctive--one of those
honest impulses that knows no sex. Did she realize, by some divine
insight, that this frankness, this absence of finical conventions, this
whole-hearted camaraderie, would hold me more sternly to my path of duty
than anything else she might have done? Did the instinct of her sex
whisper that each man's heart, however light and worldly, is the
possessor of a trusty loadstone which draws the best of him to a woman's
aid when her honor is placed unreservedly into his hands? This speaks,
of course, of men and not of human beasts; still, a woman is not put to
the peril of looking into the heart of a human beast to discover that he
is a beast--she can read it, without glasses, in his face!

"Shall we look over the rest of your estate?" I asked. And I kept the
hand until she had been helped up, then released it naturally as we
started on the tour of inspection.

We finally came to my pool, and I asked her advice in choosing a nearby
spot where I should build a lean-to; since our kitchen site, that until
now had been the location of my bailiwick, was by right of conquest
hers, a place where she should be able to approach without the
precaution of whistling like a plover--a thing she couldn't do, anyway!
So we marked a spot and started on, taking some time to encircle the
pool that, was rather large and, upon this side, densely fringed with a
riot of tropical vines and jungle stuff. Yet, when we had gone but a
little way, she stopped, looked vaguely troubled, and said:

"You won't be as near to me here as you were at the kitchen. I was so
tired last night that I didn't think very much about those men, because
our servants were leading them off. But don't you think it's possible
that some of them might wander back here on their way home?"

"There's hardly one chance in a thousand," I assured her.

"I know. But that one chance would be dreadful if--if----" she stopped,
and added wistfully: "I _would_ like to feel in the nights that you are
nearer to me!"

I turned to look at something else--at anything but her! Yet if my eyes
required a subterfuge my heart did not, and it thrilled as if some wild
musicians were tugging at its strings making them sound impass