though
there were no other knowledge in the world. If presently he thought of
her as a creature of romance, if presently she felt the need of that
keen interest, what wonder? They were playing with fire, and those
that play with fire must needs be burned. And meantime, whether he
looked at her languid in the burning noon, gay with the reviving
freshness of the dusk, leaning over the bulwarks in the night and
gazing up into the great spaces of the stars, he was always fascinated
to look again. There was the profile exquisite as sculpture, there was
the color as velvet soft as rose-petals, there was the droop of the
long silken lashes half belying with its melancholy the rapture of the
smile. Whether she spoke or whether she sang, her voice was music's
self, and he was longing for the next tone; and presently--presently
Lilian had faded like a phantom before this aurora who was fresh and
rosy and dewy, with song and color and light--a sad pale phantom wan
in a mist of tears.

"It is killing me!" she cried.

But he did not perceive the meaning of her unguarded cry: he did not
know how it was with her, for he had not yet dreamed how it was with
himself. But he was soon to discover.

Three weeks they had been wafted about from key to key, from bay to
bay; they landed and explored the quaint old towns; they made trips
into the tropical forests; great boatloads of juicy mangoes and guavas
and bananas came off to them; they scattered coins on the clear bottom
for the brown babies tumbling about the shores to dive after. Now at
noon they lay anchored in still lagoons under the shadow of an
overhanging orange-grove; now at night they were flying across the
broad seas. But Lilian felt she could endure no more of it: her life
was exhausted; she longed for the yacht's head to be turned northward,
that she might die in peace on shore. John also was impatient to be
gone. If he could have Lilian once more at home, he thought, he would
marry her in spite of her protest, and take her where forgetfulness
must needs soothe her, and strange faces make her cling to him in the
old way. The way in which she clung to him now was too bitter to be
borne. Her mother also began to think of home, and Mr. Sterling had
wearied long ago; and at length, further pretences failing, they had
been freshly provisioned and had started on their homeward way.

Reyburn had, indeed, been loath to make any change in their luxurious
summering, but he was one