dd expression. "If you
have whiskey, better tak' a drink," she suggested.

Garth had his flask; and he obeyed without question.

Throughout the operation, Rina had preserved an admirable, professional
air, intent and impersonal; and when necessary she had brusquely ordered
Garth to help her. Now that it was all over her face altered; she
continued to kneel at Natalie's side, gazing at her soft hair, and the
whiteness of her skin with a kind of sad and jealous wonder.

Garth on the alert at the change, which portended he knew not what
explosion of passion in the savage woman's breast, ordered her from
Natalie's side. She obeyed, resuming her sullen mask, but lingered near
him, plainly full of some question she desired to ask. He observed for
the first, a purpling bruise above her temple. Rina saw his eyes upon
it, and her colour changed.

"I run against a tree," she hastily volunteered.

At the same time her hand stole to her throat to hide certain marks on
its dusky roundness. Garth knew instinctively that she was loyally
lying. Mabyn had beaten her. He wondered how far the wish to serve the
woman she had injured was Rina's own impulse and how far she had been
forced to it by Mabyn. He began dimly to conceive that the red woman had
good qualities.

At last the question on her breast was spoken. "Who is she?" she asked,
pointing sullenly at the sleeping Natalie.

Garth rapidly considered what he should answer. He could not pretend to
himself that he had forgiven the woman; but since Natalie's pain was
mitigated he was cooler; and his sense of justice forced it home on him
that Rina, too, had been through her ordeal. In his present desperate
situation, his only chance of assistance lay in her--Mabyn was an
egomaniac, and utterly irresponsible. Frankness had served Garth in good
stead before this; and finally he told her the plain truth in such terms
that she could understand.

"This feeling Mabyn has for her," he insisted in the end, "is only a
passing one. If we can get her out of his sight all will go on as
before."

Rina nodded. Her inscrutable face softened a little, he thought. "I
on'erstan' now," she said quietly. "So I not go crazy wit' t'inking
about it."

Garth was glad he had told her.

Rina stood studying him with her strange and secret air. "You love her
ver' moch," she said suddenly, pointing to Natalie.

Garth bent over the sleeping figure in a way that answered her better
than words.

"I t