rnard with deliberation.

Ralston's smile expressed what for him was warm approval. "She's nothing
but an animal," he said.

Bernard took him up short. "You wrong the animals," he said. "The very
least of them love their young."

Ralston shrugged his shoulders. "All the better for Tessa anyhow."

Bernard's eyes softened very suddenly. He crumpled the note into a ball
and tossed it from him. "Yes," he said quietly. "God helping me, it
shall be all the better for her."

CHAPTER V

THE DARK NIGHT

An owl hooted across the compound, and a paraquet disturbed by the
outcry uttered a shrill, indignant protest. An immense moon hung
suspended as it were in mid-heaven, making all things intense with its
radiance. It was the hour before the dawn.

Stella stood at her window, gazing forth and numbly marvelling at the
splendour. As of old, it struck her like a weird fantasy--this Indian
enchantment--poignant, passionate, holding more of anguish than of
ecstasy, yet deeply magnetic, deeply alluring, as a magic potion which,
once tasted, must enchain the senses for ever.

The extravagance of that world of dreadful black and dazzling silver,
the stillness that was yet indescribably electric, the unreality that
was allegorically real, she felt it all as a vague accompaniment to the
heartache that never left her--the scornful mockery of the goddess she
had refused to worship.

There were even times when the very atmosphere seemed to her charged
with hostility--a terrible overwhelming antagonism that closed about
her in a narrowing ring which serpent-wise constricted her ever more and
more, from which she could never hope to escape. For--still the old idea
haunted her--she was a trespasser upon forbidden ground. Once she had
been cast forth. But she had dared to return, braving the flaming sword.
And now--and now--it barred her in, cutting off her escape.

For she was as much a prisoner as if iron walls surrounded her. Sentence
had gone forth against her. She would not be cast forth again until she
had paid the uttermost farthing, endured the ultimate torture. Then
only--childless and desolate and broken--would she be turned adrift in
the desert, to return no more for ever.

The ghastly glamour of the night attracted and repelled her like the
swing of a mighty pendulum. She was trying to pray--that much had
Bernard taught her--but her prayer only ran blind and futile through her
brain. The hour should have been sacr