e
standing defiantly before a man who slunk away out of the room while she
turned quickly and came to the couch where he was lying and bent over
him. As in a dream he felt her cool hand touch his brow and her face
come close to him.

"Oh, why? Why?" he heard her whisper. "Why have you come into my
life--now--to bring love to me? Better if I were dead; but I cannot let
you go, I cannot! Oh, my love, why have you come so late to me?"

Her lips were pressed to his, her arms encircled his neck, and as he
thrilled at her touch, at her voice, at her presence, he essayed to
answer her. But he had no strength even to move his lips in response to
her kiss, no power to raise a hand. It was as though his will no longer
had control over his muscles, as though his consciousness were something
apart from his body, something floating in space, voiceless, nerveless,
motionless, apart from himself, apart from all save the love she had for
him, and the love he had for her.

And in the glamour of that love, the bare knowledge that he existed at
all faded away, until he was as one enveloped in a mist through which
neither sight nor sound could penetrate.

The sunlight was streaming around him when next he remembered. He was
lying in a bed in an unfamiliar room. By his side the doctor was
standing. His first memory was of the stifled cry which had come to him
as he stepped on to the verandah.

"Ah, you're awake again, are you?" the doctor said cheerily. "Well, how
do you feel now?"

"Where am I?" Durham asked weakly.

"Oh, you're where you're all right, if you feel all right. Do you?"

"I'm--this isn't the hut."

He glanced round the room which was at once strange and familiar to him.

"Don't you remember leaving there? You ought to. Don't you remember how
we got you into the waggonette? When we put you on the blankets? Just
think. You're at Waroona Downs. Mrs. Burke brought you."

"But I--how did I get here?" Durham repeated, glancing again round the
room. Then it was that the memory of the cry forced itself to the
front.

"Who was it?" he asked. "Who was it?"

Another figure joined the doctor, and Mrs. Burke looked down at him.

"Who was what?" the doctor asked.

"That cry--the cry I heard," Durham replied.

"There was no cry," the doctor said. "You've been dreaming."

Durham looked from one to the other. As his eyes rested on Mrs. Burke's,
vaguely there came to him the visionary recollection of her kneeling
beside h