d and lighted, he dragged his chair out on to the
verandah, lowered the lamp flame to a glimmer, pushed-to the window, and
lay back in the chair, blowing furious clouds of smoke out upon the
night and staring, with unseeing eyes, into the dark.

But always before him there floated the vision of the speaking grey-blue
eyes looking at him from the shelter of their dark-fringed lashes;
always in his brain he heard the gentle melody of her voice as she had
last spoken to him, and always there came to taunt and goad him the
jarring memory of the half-mocking way in which she had pushed back upon
himself the frank revelation he had made. But though it jarred, it had
no power to lessen the fascination she exercised over him. Despite her
rebuff, despite the seeming hopelessness of his infatuation, it held
him. The more he tried to force it back, the stronger it grew; the
greater, the more beautiful and more lovable did Mrs. Burke appear to
be.

The jarring note passed from his memory. Under the soothing quiet of the
night and the stillness of the bush, looming dark and mysterious against
the sky, scarcely less sombre with only the light of the stars to
illumine it, his fancy was filled with the image he had carried in his
mind for so many months. The weariness of an arduous day added its
softening influence, and he drifted out upon the sea of dreams and
thence into a deep slumber, while yet his pipe was unfinished.

CHAPTER VI

THE FACE AT THE WINDOW

While Harding sat talking to Brennan in the office, Bessie came to him
with a note.

"Mrs. Eustace asked me to give you this, sir," the girl said, as she
handed it to him at the door.

He tore open the envelope. A single sheet of paper was enclosed, on
which was written, "For the sake of the bygone days, come to me."

"Where is Mrs. Eustace?" he asked.

"She's in her room, Mr. Harding, in her little sitting-room."

It was one of the rooms where he had never been, a tiny chamber at the
far end of the passage which she had made into a boudoir. Once he had
seen into it through the open door, seen the daintiness with which it
was decorated, a daintiness redolent of her as he had known her in the
days when, for him, the world held no other woman.

And she had chosen this as the place where they should meet!

He knocked at the door, and heard her voice answer, bidding him to come
in. She was sitting in a cane lounge-chair, listless, pale, and
weary-eyed.

As he