er her back, and with
the pulsing life the head and her whole body nestled closer. The soft
arms grew warm against his neck, and tightened fiercely, to hold and
keep him. Gently he forced up her chin, and her eyes, wet with hottest
tears, opened under his. He bent and kissed the long lashes. But a small
moist hand flattened against his brow and pushed back his head, and she
raised on tiptoe. He understood, and--their lips met.

"Tu sais," she murmured deliriously--nothing but her own dear French
would answer now--"tu sais, que--oh, mon coeur, que je--que je
_t'aime_!"

The oddest contrasts fall over life's most sacred moments. The tone of
her words thrilled him, set every fibre tingling, yet he thought of dry
conjugations and declensions, conned over and over again in school, and
he was conscious of vague wonderment that those things really, actually,
had a meaning. Meaning? He believed now that no words in English could
tell so much. He did not have to understand them. They bore the flesh
and blood, the passion and the soul, of a woman who told him that she
loved him.

With a hesitant gentleness which bespoke the deep and reverent awe in
his yearning, he pressed her head back against its resting place. A man
can do without words of any kind. She grew very quiet there. The tense
quivering ceased, and she crept closer, and at last she sighed,
purringly, contentedly.

But of course there was more which she simply had to say. And this time,
when she raised her eyes, they were calm and earnest, and her beautiful
forehead was white and very grave. "Do you know, dear," she said, "I
should not care to live, I would not have lived, if what he said
were--were--" But the eyes filled with tears, and angry with herself,
she planted her fists against him to be free, and as impulsively crying,
"Oh, my--my own dear lad!" she flung her arms about his neck again. "Oh,
oh," she moaned, "he said that you were dead!"

For the first time it dawned on Driscoll that all this must have had a
cause, and for the first time since entering the room he remembered
Boone.

"_He_ told you--He----"

But Driscoll did not finish. Putting her from him he sprang to the door
and flung it open. There he waited. Boone was outside, and Boone walked
expectantly in. Without a word Driscoll raised his fist, drew it back,
his cruel arm muscled to kill. Jacqueline saw his anger for her,
terrible in murder. She threw herself upon him, got hold of the knotte